


Blood and Chaos

by SaltyWords (agent4hire22)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic Dean, Angst, Blood, Canon Divergent after 10.17, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Sam, First Kiss, Heavy Angst, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Dean, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Major Character Injury, Possible Character Death, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:59:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3686217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent4hire22/pseuds/SaltyWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam and Castiel find a cure for the Mark of Cain, Dean is finally free of the curse. However, the burden is far from over when he's left to deal with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty canon close up to episode 10.17. There may be spoilers.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. I only wish to pay tribute to them.

**Part I**

  
  


_The devil and his had me down,_

_In love with the dark side I’d found._

_Dabble in all the way down_

_Up to my neck soon to drown._

  
  


_But you changed that all for me._

_Lifted me up, turned me round._

_So I…_

_I would…_

_Wish this all away_

_~ “Jambi” Tool_

  
  
  


The gaping face at the end of Dean's arm was nameless. The intention in his grip, alien. Despite those two things, Dean ran him through. Knife blade stuck deep into the man's flesh. A flick of his wrist ensured the path of destruction would include the liver, and the blood came.

It spilled over his hands, wet and hot. His nerves lit, dancing in the sounds of the man's agony. The man clawed at his skin, gashed him. Dean's blood beaded, the top layer of his skin sloughing off under his short, yet effective, nails as the man's feet crumpled underneath him and his body came to a rest of the floor.

The mark burned fervent and rabid on his arm. It was pleased. It was elated. It was not, however, satisfied. Dean looked at the path of destruction which lay around him. Five bodies. Young and old.

Man and woman.

A child.

His heart beat in his chest steady as a turbine. His hands solid. His muscles sound and ready. He pushed through the flapping gate behind the information counter and listened for the screams, or shuffling. If there were more people, he would find them. He didn’t notice the phone in his pocket as it buzzed, didn’t register the scream at the back of his mind.

A gunshot ripped through the bitter iron-laden stench that clung in the air like fear on a beat dog. Dean turned around slowly, checking his grip on the knife handle, feeling the gluey pull of the drying blood on his palm. “Hi-ya, Sammy.”

He smiled, deep and raw. Insanity caressing the edges of his eyes, filling the lines where warmth used to reside.

Sam looked back at him, just over the barrel of his smoking gun. Dean saw his hands shiver. The way the gun wobbled unsteadily. Breath huffed out of him, his broad shoulders rising and falling in tandem with Dean’s steady heartbeat. The fear read plain on his face. He seemed small, just a scared child standing up to his parents for the first time.

“Is this our song? Is it time to dance?”

“Drop the knife,” Sam said. The conviction in his voice not much greater than a vomited plea.

“Oh, come on now. What fun would that be?” He stepped forward, ignoring the squeal of his rubber boot in the swelling pool of blood underfoot.

His brain buzzed, fuzzy and smothered at the edges. He looked back at his brother, recognized him, but that old bite of love didn't follow.

Sam didn't move. He was totally stalled out.

“You gonna put me down?”

“I'm here to save you.”

Dean scoffed. “From what?” His hands rose, playful lunacy gripping him like Sam clung to the white pearled grip. “From this?” He kicked the body at his feet. “I'm good with it. I'm great with it.”

He advanced. Sam's finger ticked at the trigger. Dean's smile broadened. He held the knife out, twisting the dirty blade so it flashed like a red firecracker in the humming fluorescent light. “I love it.” He licked the blood from the edge, keeping eye contact with Sam. Watching lasciviously as Sam gagged, shuddered, let his horrified eyes slip away.

“Stop this.”

“ I can't. The power of Cain compels me. Like,  _ REDRUM _ , baby.”

“You don't have to let it take you. You're stronger than this. Just let me help you!”

A chuckle rolled out of him like dust on a desert flat. “It's a little late for a pep talk. Hell's flames are so far up my ass, I should be breathing smoke.”

“I can't let you hurt more people,” Sam said quietly.

“So what are we gonna do about it? You gonna put me down? Ya got it in ya?”

“I'll do what I have to.” Sam's hands wrung the grip. The barrel lowered away from Dean's head. The hesitant shuffle of his shoulders told Dean he was all talk, all posturing.

Dean gestured, open arms. A  _ here I am _ . A  _ then what are you waiting for _ ? He turned the blade on himself and drove the tip of it into the calloused skin on his palm. Blood oozed from him, dripped onto the floor. He watched it, then looked back at Sam. “Now's your chance. I ain't healing yet. If you wait too long, that little gun of yours won't be worth shit.”

And suddenly he had closed the space between he and Sam. Had him backed into a corner, eyes wide, arms stiff. Gun nowhere to go but Dean's stomach. He raised the knife blade. Grazed it against Sam's neck. Dean's tongue kicked against the edge of his own teeth. Nothing but weapons and tension between them. A power grab of life over death.

“ If you're gonna put me down, pull the trigger. But, if you want to  _ stop _ me, you'd better cut me into little Abaddon pieces and hide me under the concrete. You got the stomach for it?”

The mark burned hot.

“Dean...”

“I'm not your brother anymore, Sam. I'm your reaper.”

Sam's jaw shuddered. His Adam’s Apple bobbed as he swallowed against the blade’s edge.

Then, a thought spread over Dean like wildfire. He'd been in a situation much like this before, so focused on Sam that he neglected to check his flank. And the answer came to him by the way Sam's eyes locked on his, but watched something in his periphery.

He hadn't come alone.

Castiel.

Dean dropped, suddenly and violently, as if the floor had just disappeared beneath him. He tucked his head as he fell, readied himself. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when Cas’ hands passed over top of him, in a place that surely would have had him in a vice grip a beat before. But now, they grabbed nothing. Instead, Cas was left in an awkward swing, open and vulnerable to attack, which is just what Dean had hoped.

He took his opportunity. He rolled back onto his right shoulder and kicked both feet into Castiel’s center mass, catching him on the sternum and tumbling him backwards. Dean followed the momentum through flawlessly and flipped back over, ending up on his feet again, crouched and coiled like a snake ready to strike.

Sam’s face went wide, the gun waggled recklessly as he attempted to re aim despite the fight of his stiff shoulders and twitching muscles. Dean paid no attention. He was on Cas like a wolf on an unguarded lamb. On top of him, legs straddling each side, knife blade pointed down inches above Cas’ chest. Their hands locked together, shaking against the sudden Strong Arm contest, Castiel struggling against Dean’s weight, trying to keep the blade tip out of his skin. 

“Drop the knife!” Sam yelled, his voice booming off the empty, open space and large paned windows.

Dean didn’t even blink.

“It’s not an angel blade. What are you going to do with it?” Castiel asked, his voice unsteady and unfocused, so totally caught by surprise.

Dean could feel the grace under his fingertips, the pulse of the heavenly power like blood. A constant static charge that jumped his adrenaline. But he could also feel how depleted it was. How Castiel wasn’t going to waste any of it in what he could only assume would be a pointless wrestling match. He was right, after all. The blade in Dean’s hand couldn’t kill the angel. He could stab him with it to his heart’s content, and Cas would just keep on trucking. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun to use him as a pin cushion while he had the chance, though. 

He bore down on the knife, watched ravenously as the tip slowly dipped down closer to the angel’s chest. The Castiel’s eyes searched him, probably looking for the friend he wouldn’t find in Dean’s face. The friend he sought was consumed by the Mark, held hostage at the back of consciousness, unable to do anything but mourn after all was said and done.

If that time ever came.

“Nothin’,” Dean said. A smile cracked his face. His white teeth shone like a tin of pearls. He was nearly horizontal against the angel. All his weight centered over the knife. Cas struggled to hold him up, his face burning bright red with effort.

Dean slipped a hand away, quietly trailed it to the inside pocket of Castiel’s trenchcoat. He felt around carefully, not breaking eye contact. The knife blade dipped further still, the tip of it burrowing in like a hungry tick. A bloom of red blood soaked into the white cotton shirt. “Ah, come on, baby. Don’t be coy,” he grunted. “Just between you and me, I know you wouldn’t mind a little...penetration.” He winked, a quick little tic of his eye. Something so innocuous, it was strange how it seemed to burn a hole in Cas’ stomach.

Castiel grimaced and swallowed hard.

The knife might not kill him, Dean thought, but it obviously pained him. He didn’t have all the power of heaven that he once did.

Then, Dean found what he was looking for. His fingers brushed the smooth, cool grip of the angel blade towed in Cas’ hidden pocket. Dean only knew it was there because he knew the angel. But, as one does when betrayed by a friend, Cas didn’t realize it was a ruse. 

Dean plucked it from the pocket and brought it out, it glinted in the fading light. His smile broadened, his jaw slack. “But, this one is,” he said.

  
  


_ Damnit.  _ How did he not see that coming? How could he have been so careless?

Castiel dropped his hold on Dean in favor of stopping the hand that could end him. Dean crashed into him, the knife plunging into his body up to the hilt, clipping against his collarbone, serrating his pec muscle, and snagging between two ribs on the way down. The weight of Dean’s body sandwiched him to the floor.

Cas cried out against the shock of pain, grasped Dean’s hand with the angel blade, recoiled against the one in his chest. The jittery electric nerve storm that exploded in his body was alarming. His grace was low, dangerously lacking. Castiel was suddenly and nakedly aware of that fact.

He and Dean were nose to nose, Dean’s weight on the blade in his chest, his muscles struggling against Cas as they fought for the angel blade. Dean laughed, a low, rumbling chuckle. No joy in it, just an exertion of power. He licked a hot, wet tongue along Cas’ bottom lip, kept that unnerving eye contact, reveled in Castiel’s disgust. 

Dean tasted of bile and fear.

Cas’ heart pounded erratically. This was not his Dean. There was no friend in those eyes. His tongue felt defiling. He was beginning to reek of sulphur. Cas was quickly running out of time. He knew Dean was still in there somewhere, He hadn’t yet fulfilled the prophecy. He and Sam were both still alive, therefore, Dean must still be intact, somewhere in the corner of his own mind.

Cas hoped.

Suddenly a shot rang out, this one a held breath in the middle of a sound stage. Cas heard a groan shudder through Sam as he pulled the trigger, fought his own full body ache as he saw Dean take the hit. A wing to the left shoulder. Enough to trigger every fear Cas had anguished over for the past six years. They were trying to save him and he was going to end up dying anyway.

Dean bowed against the pain, yowled, clutched his shoulder, and momentarily lost his hold of the angel blade. He grunted and toppled off.

It was the only opportunity Cas was going to get. He ripped the blade from Dean’s reach and threw it to Sam, begging wordlessly for Sam to get the blade the hell out of there, lest they lose their only chance to save him. Sam grabbed it, stowed it in his belt and anxiously toyed with the gun in his hands. It was evident that he wasn’t going to go anywhere. He was afraid to leave Cas with no backup, afraid to leave his brother’s side.

Castiel leveraged himself with a handful of Dean’s shirt and swung a leg over him, pinning down Dean’s lower half with his own weight and Dean’s uninjured arm with one hand. Now, at least, Cas had the higher ground. 

He braced himself, grabbed the blade, still lodged between two ribs, and yanked it out. He reeled against the puckering ache that ensued. Hot blood poured down the front of his coat, dribbled onto Dean’s black cotton Henley, lost in the tonal night. 

“My kind of shower!” Dean said, through gritted teeth.

“Stop talking.” 

Cas shoved Dean’s jacket sleeve up to his elbow and floated the bloodied blade into his forearm, filleting the skin from his muscle and bone. Dean snarled an almost inhuman wail as Cas peeled the skin back, chopping at the sinewy grit that wanted so desperately to stay in place.

He had to remove the mark. And, he would do so at any cost.

Dean tried to swing his loose arm into the angel, tried to claw at his skin. But the bullet that had torn through this shoulder had successfully debilitated him. He was no demon. He couldn’t regenerate. The rage might depress his pain, but nothing could repair the ripped tendons and broken rotator cuff, except time, or Castiel’s grace.

“Fucking angel!”

“You do not get to speak,” Cas said. His hands shook as he held Dean down, as he finished pulling the slice of flesh from his arm. It was slippery between his fingers, wet with blood. The Mark sat in the middle of it, pulsing and red, an infection of Dean’s gentle soul. The black mark that was corrupting him, one kill at a time.

He drove the blade tip through it, impaled it to the floor.

And now there was a dead child. He would never forgive himself for that.

“What’s this gonna to do? You can separate the Mark. It won’t cure the cancer!”

Dean spat at Castiel, caught his chin with it.

Cas took a deep breath, closed his eyes, ignored the saliva as it slid off his face. He pulled his focus in, summoned his dwindling grace and slapped one hand on Dean’s forehead, forcing his head violently back into the floor with a crack.

_Unintentional_. Perhaps he was a little more angry at the situation than he’d previously evaluated. 

His eyes opened, powered bright and blue as the grace rose inside him, filled his human cells and charged him hot, like the loose end of an electric cable. He felt Sam’s eyes on him, felt him close and ready.

“ _ Tolteregi de donasdogamatastos, de oresa, de teloah.  Niiso. Niis pambt _ .”

The Enochian words rattled from his throat. He felt the vibrations of the spell as it began to work through him. Dean grasped at his wrist, but the strength of Cas’ grace held him in place.

“ _Barinu en alonusahi, en bial, en mononusa pugo elasa. Noasmi elasa, aboaperi elasa, zacar elasa. Niisa a teloah_.” 

Dean stilled. His hand fell from Castiel’s. Cas’ body began to shake, the power draining quickly from him. He felt the stab wound in his chest front and center, the grace holding the pieces of him together seemed as if it were melting like ice cream on a hot day. “Ol-” he stumbled, stopped himself from falling into Dean with a quick palm to Dean’s chest. 

“Cas.” Sam’s voice sounded distant. 

“ _Ol  dalagare en gigipah pugo elasa, en congamphlgh_.” He finished the incantation weakly, the last word trailing into the silence of the battered storeroom. 

Then nothing. Dean was still, eyes closed, blood pooling around him, both his and Castiel’s. Cas’ chest burned. His lungs were on fire, his breath short and gasping as he came off of his grace high. 

He felt the blood drool from his lip. The knife wound to his chest ravaged him. He pressed a hand against it, felt his saturated lapel, and looked up at Sam with desperation. “Wait,” he commanded. 

Sam knelt down next to him, one hand on Cas’ back, the other on Dean’s throat. He was feeling for a pulse.

“He’s alive,” Cas said bluntly. “I can feel his heartbeat.”

“Did it work?”

“It’s not done yet, but I have one more thing I have to do first.”

He rolled off of Dean clumsily, rasped breath into his punctured lungs, and struggled to find his feet. He pulled the knife from the pound of loose flesh and absently wiped it on his shirt before tucking it in his waistband.

The girl. The child.

He crumpled to his knees next to her body. She was young. Castiel was not very good at pinpointing age, younger than ten. Her long blond hair and plastic pink barrette reminded him of Claire-- young Claire, right when he assumed Jimmy’s body as his own, all those years ago. When his righteous mission lead him to Dean, and Sam, and free will. The abrupt turn in his immortality that would bring him to this moment, staring down the barrel of a gun with his name on it, so to speak. A gun he held in his own hand, of his own will. A perfectly culminated sublimity. 

He stroked her cold, plump white cheek sweetly, accidentally leaving a streak of blood behind. His grace ticked into gear again, sputtering like the engine of a car long past its prime. He wouldn’t need much. She was small. Children’s souls were more commonly left standing in the ether, waiting for a parent to usher them onto the next. He wouldn’t have to go far to find it. 

He closed his eyes and focused. The spirit world  easily revealed to him as he shut out the corporeal plain. It was as simple as transcending the physical. 

As he suspected, the girl stood  near her corpse, watching him. A reaper by her side.

“Why are you here?” Castiel was surprised. Since the doors to heaven were shut, souls hadn’t been shepherded into the afterlife as regularly. 

“I’ve been taking them through the back door,” he said. “Just trying to sweep up the collecting piles. You’re resurrecting her?” He softly brushed the girl’s hand and looked down at Castiel. His deep shadowed eyes and broad forehead made him look as much like an usher of death as he was one. He knelt to the floor, leveling himself with Castiel.

“Yes. Her death needs to be corrected.”

The girl looked at him, eyes dark and wide. She clung to the reaper with one hand, the other tucked close in her body.

“I agree. This child should not have been taken. What Dean Winchester is doing is terrible. He must be stopped,” the reaper said.

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“But, can you stop him, Castiel?” His question was not innocuous. It seethed with implied opinion, tempered in history and hearsay. He let the moment curdle between them, then he looked at the girl. “Would you like to go back to your mommy, Julia?”

The girl  looked at him, considered him, then back to Castiel. “It hurt,” she said quietly.

Cas swallowed hard. “I will fix it.” He answered both to the girl and the reaper. “My name is Castiel. I’m an angel. Have you heard of angels?”

She nodded tentatively.

“I won’t hurt you.” He extended a hand.

She recoiled. “You’re full of blood.”

He nodded. “I am. I’m dying.” He wiped his palm on a clean part of his coat and extended it again. “We must be fast.”

“Shall I wait for you?” the reaper asked, a small smile on his face.

“Angel’s don’t have reapers.”

“I don’t know, Castiel. You might.” 

The little girl backed away from the reaper and took Cas’ hand. He pulled her soul back into her body and secured it, using his grace like the glue in papier mache. He was suddenly unsure if it was even going to work. His grace was depleted, weak. He didn’t have enough to saturate her soul. All he could do was patch it and hope. He needed to keep enough to finish the spell, or there wouldn’t be enough angels in heaven to patch humanity back together.

The ethereal hum of the incorporeal plain snuffed out and the lights in the room raised again as physical input rushed back to him. The girl at his knee gasped in a rocky breath and her brown eyes popped open. She started screaming, a blood curdling wail as she peeled her limbs from the drying pool of blood around her body.

Castiel could still feel the reaper’s eyes on him. 

Suddenly, the world bowed and spun. He toppled over next to Julia grasping at his chest. The angelic part of him began to error, a sort of flashing  _ low battery _ warning . His vision went spotty, doubled, blurred.  He could suddenly see through the cracks. One moment, his own hands against his coat, the next, a bundled mess of atoms and ions and electricity.  His vessel was low on blood and there wasn’t enough angel left in him to compensate. He was dying quicker than he’d estimated.

Sam rushed over to his side. He felt his large hands on his chest, pressing in on his wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Remove the girl,” Cas choked out.

Sam nodded, ripped off his outer shirt and balled it up, shoving it against Castiel. “Hold this to your chest, Cas. I’ll be right back.” He dropped a knee and scooped Julia up, cupping her head to his shoulder. “It’s ok. You’re gonna be fine,” Cas heard Sam coo as he rushed her away.

The hollow echo that replaced Sam’s heavy breathing deafened Cas. The agonizing groans coming from his own throat were all that was left. He coughed out more blood, and rolled onto his side, his knees. The world settled back into place, temporarily solid. He tried to get to his feet, fell again and instead,  crawled back over to Dean’s body. He languidly pulled the knife from his waistband and set it on the floor.

This was good. Sam was gone. He much preferred to do this last part alone. With Dean out cold, there would be no witnesses or messy memories. He took a deep breath, listened to the blood gurgle in his lungs, and he picked up the knife. He looked down at Dean and softly laid an open hand on his chest. Emotion came to him like a punch to the stomach. It welled up in his chest and hot tears brimmed from his eyes. He leaned down and hugged him. He lingered a moment, taking Dean’s smells in. The fresh cotton scent of his dryer sheets, the clinging leather musk of the impala mixed with his rich woody aftershave. 

If angel’s were incapable of love, then Cas didn’t know what it was he felt. He longed in this moment to just see Dean’s green eyes again, his mischievous smile. To share a laugh with him, or a hug.

_Dean._

Not the abomination that had subsumed his person, but _Dean_. 

“Thank you, my friend,” he said quietly. “For everything.” 

He sobbed and struggled back to sitting, began fumbling slippery, sticky fingers on his buttons, pulled his striped blue tie loose around his neck. He managed to open it down to his sternum. That would do.

_Okay, that’s far enough, Tony Manero._ Dean’s voice echoed in his head. Cas didn’t understand the reference at the time, but now he understood it to be Dean likening him to a fictional character with a low cut shirt on a popular film in the 1970s. 

He sniffed back a fresh onslaught of tears and pawed the knife handle into his hand. He slowly, carefully carved the necessary sigil into his chest. The sigil he’d committed to memory as he’d read and reread the curing spell hundreds of times. Blood drooled from the gashes, sliding down his sweat-soaked skin disappearing into his black suit pants. His jaw ached as he gritted his teeth.

Blood Sacrifice was always so messy.

He laid a hand on Dean’s face again, softly. “ _ Barinu en malpirgi _ ,” he whispered. He braced himself, then dug the blade into his abdomen, dragging it from one side to the other, splitting a gaping wound in himself. He gasped in shock, desperately grasping a fistfull of Dean’s coat to keep himself upright. His brain lit in a stupendous electrical storm. His blood washed Dean, splattering onto his chest, his face.

For a moment he couldn’t think of anything but the pain, until it slipped out of him, draining from him with his blood and all feeling.

But, at least the spell was complete.

Dean’s body jerked beneath him, rigid and hot. Castiel bloomed with a sudden engulfing fullness, then his vision jarred out again, the world falling away from him, rising to a romantic sea of sound waves and colors. He couldn’t see Dean, but he could still feel him. Alive beneath his fingers, moving, groaning. Awakened again.

Castiel was done. A shell of a being, neither angel or human. He teetered on the edge of existence. He should be dead and gone, but the angel grace still inside him kept him cruelly there, in the moment. His hand lost its strength, lost its hold to Dean, and he fell backwards. His head cracked hard against the store floor, but the pain didn’t find him.

He was numb. His heart sputtered, tried to pump the blood through his body, but it had none left and it stopped.  His brain was beginning to atrophy. His body was dead.

Suddenly Dean’s hands were on him, brushing his face. His vision flitted back for the  moment and he could see Dean above him. He favored his shot and broken shoulder, ignored his skinned arm.

Dean called his name. It didn’t sound like the Dean he was used to. The gruff, playful cantor of his voice was replaced by a hollow whisper saturated in shock and fear. It broke Castiel’s heart. Dean’s hands moved sporadically between Cas’ face and his wounds. 

Cas brought in a shallow, broken breath. The sucking noise of the air in his lungs was grotesque. It was strange to breathe when you no longer needed to, but the air was necessary to speak.  “Are you… you?”

Dean nodded. His face was drawn and scared. The blood that painted him reminded Castiel of Purgatory, of Dean’s warrior self. But his expression was scared and damaged. He struggled against a flood of grief. Cas didn’t know how much Dean understood of what was going on. How much he remembered of the past twenty-four hours. 

Dean propped Castiel onto his lap and fiercely hugged him. 

Cas sunk into it. He could smell Dean again, feel his shivering muscles and aching soul against his body.

“Why are you doing this?” Dean asked. His voice cracked. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

Cas swallowed, closed his eyes, then looked back up at Dean. The silence was thick. The answer hung between them even now like a fat, writhing worm, impossible to ignore but hard to address. “I couldn’t.”

His sight skipped out again, no more colors or atoms or sound waves, just black. His mind falted, stuttered, and broke. He suddenly couldn’t find the words he sought. English failed him, intelligent thought escaped him. His biblical coding kicked in; the strings of an unravelling celestial entity playing like a harp. A last redalert from his body.

“Zir a noco, ioad, Castiel.”

“What? Cas, I don’t speak Enochian.”

“Zir a noco, ioad, Castiel.”

“I don’t understand!” Dean yelled.

Castiel fought against the darkness, Dean’s panic rousing him back to himself. 

“Dean,” he said. The name found its way to him, like he was coming home again. Like it was part of his coding. It settled into him warm and full. “Dean.”

“Yeah, Cas. I’m here.”

“You will always be in my heart,” Castiel said. His voice cut just above a breath. He put his hand over Dean’s heart, felt it beat powerfully against him, and he was happy. He smiled softly and shot the rest of his grace into Dean, finally letting the darkness take him.

  
  


+

  
  


Sam ran like hell. Like a pack of Hellhounds were nipping at his heels. 

The girl hadn’t stopped screaming. She’d screamed all the way out of the grocery store and into the parking lot. He quickly realized he hadn’t a clue what to do with her. And even his quiet reassurance and soft hand over her mouth did nothing to muffle her panic. 

Sam had pulled uselessly at the Impala’s door handles out of habit, but it was locked. He didn’t have the keys and the girl wouldn’t let him set her down for the world, so picking the lock was out of the question. Then, he’d looked for Cas’ car, scanning the parking lot desperately for it. He didn’t see it anywhere.

So he ran with her. He’d spotted a small subdivision of houses just past the store corner and down the block. He didn’t know what else to do but take her to someone there. He couldn’t leave her.

He beelined for the first house he came upon, a small, blue two story with a wind worn chime out front. Up to the front door, knocking wildly on the polished red wood. 

The blinds parted and eyes peeked out hesitantly. Sam’s heart was in his throat. There was a pause, then suddenly the door flew open. “What on earth?” A little old woman clad in slippers and robe pushed her glasses up her nose, her eyes wide.

Sam towered above her. He wrenched the girl’s arms off his neck, pried her away from him. “I just found her like this, please take her,” he said. “Get her help.”

“Where did she come from?”

Sam passed the girl over and backed away.

“Who are you?”

Sam stumbled over an answer. He didn’t have any ID on him, he was in street clothes. He was open carrying, sweating, in a t-shirt at dusk in winter, blood on his hands...

The woman cupped the girls head to her shoulder and backed away from the jamb. She had fear in her eyes. About the time she glanced nervously to her kitchen, to her phone, to her husband-- he wasn’t sure--he split. Back up the street, through a yard, hopping a fence for good measure.

Sam ran.

He wasn’t dumb. The sirens in the distance were for him.

He tore back to the store, the wind biting at his bare arms and frozen face. The icy streets were harder to maneuver in the spreading shadows of the sinking sun. He made good use of his 6’ 4”runner’s body. He had to get Dean out of there. They were out of time.

It wouldn’t be long before the police found the massacre at Tom’s Grocery on Center Street.

  
  


Sam burst through the sliding double doors into the grocery store, clipping his shoulder sideways on the frame when they didn’t part fast enough. He stumbled into the back room and froze. His breath caught in his chest, the gun he’d pulled from his belt nearly jumped his grasp. 

Cas was laid out on the floor, head in Dean’s lap, charred skeletal angel wings branching from one wall to the other. The blood was like what Sam’s nightmares were made of. Dean didn’t look at him, didn’t even seem to notice he was there. Sam was suddenly unsure if the spell had even worked.

Maybe he’d left and Dean killed Cas.

He approached slowly. The florescent lights buzzed overhead. His heart pounded in his ears. His breath rasped in and out of his chest. “Dean?” He felt like he was trying to swallow a mouth full of cotton. Cold sweat dripped down between his shoulderblades. 

Dean stared forward, face slack, expression dead. Tears streaked through his bloody cheeks. His body shivered violently. 

Sam knew shock when he saw it. He’d seen it plenty of times.

He rushed in, crouched next to Dean, put a hand on the back of his brother’s neck and got close to his face, forcing himself into his line of sight. “You with me, Dean?”

Dean looked back at him, eyes slowly moving between Sam’s as if they had to swim through mud.  “Yeah.” 

It came as more of a question than an answer. 

“Ok. Hey, you’re ok.” Sam pat his neck, wiped some blood off his face with the tail of his shirt. Watched his brother’s vacant reaction to him. 

He turned and put two fingers to Cas’ carotid artery. He wasn’t really sure what he was doing. Wasn’t even sure if Cas had had a pulse before his guts were mostly on the outside. He already knew his friend was dead. It seemed important to check anyway. Regardless, when he didn’t find one, he gingerly closed Cas’ eyes and moved Dean’s hands off of him.  He pushed Dean’s sleeve up, checking the damage. He readied himself to either see the mark, or a horrific mess of muscle and veins and bone. He was surprised when it was neither, just smooth, regular skin. His old arm. A little too white from the winter, and clad in sporadic freckles, like the rest of him.

Cas must have been able to heal him. He quickly sighed a breath of relief when he realized that meant Dean’s gunshot wound was also taken care of.

Sam felt like they had managed to pull an unlikely win.

But, upon scanning the devastation in the small grocery mart, Sam couldn’t help but question what the cost was. What was the value of a Winchester’s life over so many others? He’d asked himself that before. He tried not to think about it often. But moments like this always forced the question back up like bad heartburn.

This civilian place was sullied with blood. A friend was dead-- _no, family_. Dean, wore an expression not unlike a lifer in one of the most dilapidated sanatoriums. What price had they really paid? What had the four dead people in that room paid? The little girl? 

Yeah, Cas had raised her, but it wasn’t like it was before. He’d done a shit job of it. A patch-in-go effort to save Dean from more pain. 

Sam swallowed his bitterness. He knew he could be as resentful about it as he wanted, but the truth was, it had all been out of their hands. He often felt like nothing more than a pawn on God’s chess board. 

But, right now, he had to focus. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in prison asking these questions. Getting bi-yearly updates from his brother in the nearest county psychward. 

He heard Dean choke out Cas’ name, weak and forlorn. They needed to wrap this up.

Sam grasped the back of Dean’s neck again and forced himself into his line of vision. “We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”

Dean blinked. He looked at Sam then his eyes darted back over to Castiel, searching. His jaw wobbled as he tried to speak. “I--I, uh. I think Cas is dead, Sammy.”

Sam clenched his teeth, saw Cas’ bloodied and lifeless form in his periphery and nodded solemnly. “Yeah, he didn’t make it, Dean. I’m sorry.”

Tears broke the brim of Dean’s eyes but his distant expression didn’t change. “I killed him. I killed Cas.” 

“No--”

“Cain was right.” Dean looked suddenly, desperately at Sam. Sam jerked back surprised. Dean grabbed his collar. “What if I kill you too?”

“Hang on,” Sam pulled Dean’s hand from his shirt and pushed Dean’s sleeve up to his elbow. “The mark is gone. You’re cured. You didn’t kill Cas. Cas saved you. You’re not gonna kill me either. It’s done. It’s over.”

Dean didn’t look at it.

“Dean, we need to leave. We have to get out of here before the cops find us.” 

He sat back, worked his tongue around his mouth, then absently moved his arm from Sam’s grasp to brush hair from Cas’ forehead.

Sam suddenly realized Dean hadn’t moved his left arm. He had it tucked tightly against his body, favoring it gingerly with an off balance lean. Sam frowned. It was the arm he’d shot. That would mean…

Sam gently pressed a hand against Dean’s shoulder and came away with a palm full of fresh blood. There was too much horror around them to discern much in the way of injuries, but he realized now that it was Dean’s shoulder causing the dripping noise on the floor.

_ Shit _ . Cas hadn’t had enough mojo left to heal it after all. Sam surged with a fresh burst of adrenaline. He scanned around him for something to apply pressure, but the only thing he spotted was the shirt he’d given to Cas. He grabbed it, felt how heavy it was with blood and reconsidered shoving it against Dean. It would be adding insult to injury at the very least.

The store was like the seventh circle of hell. Sam felt like he’d crawled back into the cage and this time he wasn’t going to be able to find his way back out. 

He pressed his hand into Dean’s shoulder instead and Dean grimaced. It was the biggest reaction Sam had gotten out of him so far.

“Dean, we need to go.”

He pressed down harder when Dean’s eyes didn’t move from Cas. When his blank face made no sign of recognition or comprehension. Sam was suddenly reminded of that dark time in the middle of an abandoned warehouse when Dean had done the same to him. Pressing lividly down on a freshly stitched cut in effort to stop his pervasive hallucinations. 

The two of them seemed to keep going around in circles. 

Dean cried out and grabbed Sam’s arm, suddenly there, suddenly present, roused by the pain. His eyes focused and surprised.

“Dean, we need to get the hell out of here. You need first aid, bad. The police are coming. Are you hearing me?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. His voice was stronger this time. His response quicker. 

“Good. Christ.” Sam hooked his brother under his right arm and heaved him to standing. Dean was smaller than him, but not small enough to make it easy. He wobbled on shaky legs and looked up at Sam for direction.

“You got the keys?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so.” Dean patted his pocket, fished into his jeans and pulled out the mostly barren keychain. A single silver-toothed GM key swung at the end of his finger. 

Pain seemed to suddenly rush him as the shocked stupor began to subside, and he bent over cradling his arm. He crouched, then toppled back on the floor.

“I think I’m gonna puke. Or pass out.”

“Deep breaths,” Sam reminded. “It’s not like you’ve never been shot before.” He picked him back up. Stood next to him as a steadying hand. “Keep pressure on it." 

Dean looked back at him, his face drawn and pale. His eyes red and wet. Just a moment away from spilling again. His brow knitted, he started to say something then stopped. “Help me with Cas,” he said instead. “Please.”

Sam felt his own face flush red, hot tears building. He patted his brother’s face gently and took the keys nodding. “We won’t leave him, I promise.”

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Part II**

  
  


_Dust devil swept you away_

_It’s still not real_

_Ash and urn and silence_

_Talk to me_

_Dust devil swept you away_

_My recollections are all that’s left of you_

_Swirl and sway_

_Without me_

_~”Horizons” Puscifer_

  
  
  


It was all fucked. Their lives. The world. Everything.

Sam glanced away from the rearview mirror trying to keep Dean’s breakdown as private as possible.

They’d made it out of the store, only just barely. Sam had carried the brunt of Castiel’s weight, but Dean refused to wait for him in the car. He’d insisted on helping, even though, he himself should have probably been carried there. So the two of them had packed Cas to the Impala. Dean crawled in the backseat first, and Sam laid Cas’ body in his lap. 

Dean was doing okay. Holding it together admirably well, actually. Until the engine started. Sam was sure it had everything to do with being in the Impala.

He’d sobbed and shook for a long time. Grief and panic hitting him like a Mack truck. Sam had seen snippets of Dean’s panic attacks before, but he was always half numb from drinking, so they weren’t as bad. Or, at least, he was diligent to keep them under wraps when Sam was around. But, he was running sober now. His emotional trash compactor was stuck in reverse. His nerves raw. His body was done, and he just couldn’t. So he broke.

Sam managed to keep it together. Burying everything he was feeling until some later time when he could take the liberty to feel it. He was determined to be the rock Dean needed. Even still, some rogue tears had escaped him while he drove. 

Cas was dead. Dean was heartbroken, and just plain wrecked. The stuff he had waiting for him to wade through, about the Mark, about the human _murders_ , they likely hadn’t even hit him yet.

“Gotta keep pressure on the bullet wound, Dean,” Sam said, trying to remind him, to distract him. To let him know that he wasn’t alone, in the very least. He said it more than once. He said it softly and sternly. Dean just wasn’t listening. So, Sam wasn’t the least bit surprised when, by the time they’d finally made it to the bunker, Dean had passed out. Lack of blood, or stress eventually bringing him down.

“Hey.” Sam patted Dean’s face as he leaned over the seat. “How we doing? You awake?”

Dean’s eyes pulled open, then slipped shut again. He grunted back.

“Shoulder stop bleeding?”

Dean looked down at the seat drowsily. His reactions were slow motion. His voice came out hoarse and weak. “Don’t think so. There’s a lotta blood back here.”

“Are you even trying to keep pressure on it?”

Dean’s head lolled against the side window. 

Sam knew he had to get some QuickClot in Dean’s shoulder and probably hook him into an IV if he was going to make it. His face was white, almost bluish. He seemed to have lost all strength. Sam opened the impala door and pushed back the front seat.

“Clot stuff’s in the bathroom. Gimme a hand.” He reached for Dean, still slumped against the window.

“Just go get it. Bring it here.”

“What? No, we need to go inside.”

Dean let the silence be his answer. His hand ticked along Cas’ shoulder. It was subtle, but telling.

“He wouldn’t want you to sit here bleeding out next to his vessel, Dean.”

Dean looked up at Sam softly and closed his eyes again. He didn’t have to say it. Sam could see it happening. He just wanted to die. Left to his own devices, Dean Winchester would stay in the back of the Impala and wait for death to find him.

Sam sat on the cold concrete floor and looked solemnly at Dean, his long knobby knees folding up as he leaned against the car frame. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, or what he should say, but he knew what he felt. “You let yourself die back here and I was the one that killed you. Don’t do that to me. Please.” 

Sam  teared up, watched the hurt crawl across his brother’s face. 

Manipulative? Yes. But, it was true, and Sam had learned a long time ago it was the only way to get Dean’s stubborn ass to do what he needed.

Dean extended his hand reluctantly and Sam took it.

  
  


+

  
  


Dean sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched his blood drip onto the floor.

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

Sam cut his shirt back with a pair of scissors. He peeled the stuck fabric from where it had dried into his wound. He asked Dean a question.

_What was it?_

Dean watched the blood slide down his arm, pool at the end of his fingers, swell and fall off, splattering onto the white tiles, into the grout. Each drip followed the same path as the blood before it, trailing along, building layers over his skin. 

Kinda like him and Sam. They kept doing the same thing, following the same patterns, leaving layers upon layers of devastation in their wake. Maybe it was just time to jump off.

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

Sam said something else. He sounded so tired, strung out. His hands shook. He was trying to be careful, but the shirt was pretty well glued to Dean at this point. He fiddled with the first aid box, cut away more of Dean’s shirt, stopped and spoke again. He looked sad. He patted Dean’s bare chest, waited. Said Dean’s name -- sounded  like he said Dean’s name.

Dean just watched the blood.

Sam grabbed a small green packet from the kit and said something else. He ripped it open and poured the white powder into his hand--

_Drip_

_Drip_

\--then shoved his palm into Dean’s shoulder and ground the powder into it. Dean gasped, blinked, then recoiled with a yelp. Sam grabbed a handful of his shirt and stopped him from falling backward into the tub basin. 

“Hey, hey, hey! Just a couple seconds! Just a couple seconds, Dean!” 

Dean grit his teeth and growled in agony. “Son of a bitch!” The burning was horrible. He pulled himself in, closed his eyes and tried to breathe through it. After a few excruciating beats, the burning subsided and the steady thrum of the dripping blood ceased. He waited for the ringing in his ears to do the same. 

“See? It’s done. You’re okay.”

Dean nodded, breathed, patted Sam’s hand, regained balance on the tub’s edge.

Sam cleaned some of the blood from his exposed shoulder with an iodine wipe and looked closely at the bullet wound. “Good news, bad news,” he said after a long pause. “The bullet definitely went all the way through, might’ve tore your rotator cuff by the location, but the clot powder stopped the bleeding. I’ll get ya patched up, and I can go find my old arm sling, but I think we’re gonna have to go to the ER.”

Dean finally took a moment to check it out. His shoulder was swollen, bruised, and bloody, but it was all in one piece, and not as gory as he’d imagined. All the important parts were still attached. 

He rubbed absently at his chest. 

_Something was so strange about the motion_. _Something familiar._

It was sore. Tired from crying, from holding his breath, from whatever. His skin was cold, he could feel it where Sam had cut away his shirt. Gritty, with dirt, sweat and blood. He suddenly realized he was feeling something odd on his skin, a large raised scar right in the center of his chest. He looked down, then sat back to try to see it. He noticed Sam’s face fall from the corner of his eye. He stood up quickly, looked in the mirror and blinked back a severe headrush, almost toppling back into Sam. 

His stomach dropped to the floor. A scarred handprint decorated his chest just over his heart.

_Cas_. 

Just like the one he’d had on his arm after hell. 

_Cas…_

Castiel had left him another. A memento.

Only, in this moment, it served only to remind Dean of his death.

Dean’s jaw went slack. His face flushed. He traced his fingers around it, for a moment mesmerized and horrified. A numb ache clawed at his soul. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him. 

“Just patch me up,” he said quietly.

“You can’t ignore it, Dean.”

The thick silence hung between them. Sam stalled and backed down. “Your shoulder. If you don’t get it looked at, you might really fuck up your shoulder.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No you won’t.”

“I said I’m fine. Just patch me up.”

“Dean.”

Sam stood, dropped the scissors back in the first aid box, the used iodine wipes in the garbage. He looked at Dean, waiting.

Dean knew the look. Sam wanted him to relax, take a moment, be honest with himself. He returned Sam’s gaze but his eyes quickly dropped away. 

He was too afraid to say it out loud. Even though he could tell Sam already knew. Was already standing there ready to hug him and tell him he was sorry, that it was going to be okay, that he would get through it… eventually. How could he not know? In the very least Dean had just spent the last hour crying and dry heaving panic about _it_ … _about him_. 

But, saying it outloud felt like he would condemn it. It felt disingenuous, trying to categorize it, place it, name it. It was just… Cas. 

“Just gimme the gauze and I’ll do it myself.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“You don’t have shit to do right now. Sit down.”

“Gimme the goddamn gauze.”

“You’re being a child. Would you just relax for a minute? I’m not trying to fight with you, Dean.”

Dean clenched his teeth, sighed. His knees wanted to buckle. He didn’t have the strength to be standing and he knew it, but he was stubborn.  Dean couldn’t sit there and indulge in feelings. Cas was upstairs stuck alone in the garage, in the back of the Impala, like forgotten groceries. He had to get him out, cleaned up. Buried. “I need to get Cas,” he said.

“I’ll go get him right now.”

“No, Sam. I’ll get him.”

“You were just shot, Dean. You can’t carry a buck seventy down a flight of stairs!”

“Then I’ll drink a fucking Gatorade first!”

Sam held up his hands, surrendered, looked away. He rubbed his face, sniffed back some tears and then hugged Dean, hard.  

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “About Cas.”

Dean was tense. He let gesture linger a moment before accepting it. Before allowing a  note of comfort. He knew Sam needed a hug as badly as he did. It was selfish to not at least acknowledge it. His poor brother looked like he’d just been dragged through hell. He wore the same expression that decorated his face after the whole Mystery Spot fisco. As if he’d just watched Dean die over and over again. 

Only, it wasn’t just Dean this time. It was Cas who died. Whose body Sam had carried to the car. It was Dean who was broken inside--no, crumbling, like a sandcastle in high tide. Whom Sam was trying desperately to keep away from the fucking edge. And, it was the people… the people Dean had brutally murdered in that grocery store. 

Dean’s legs went out, a wave of anxiety taking him again. He just couldn’t reel it back in. He couldn’t get his shit together. He was having so much trouble just trying to button it back up.

_Fuck_. 

Sam caught him, lowered him to the floor. Dean’s mind raced in circles. He could feel another panic attack coming on.

_Fuck._

“I can’t do it, Sammy.” He shivered, his face went into his hands. “It’s too big. I fucked up too big this time.”

“It’s gonna be ok, though. We’ll figure it out. Like we always do, right?”

Sam sounded hollow. Not even he believed that.

“I just,” Dean stalled. Looked at his hands, his shirt, his jeans. “I have to get the blood off. I need to get his blood off.” He stumbled up from the floor, scrambled into the bathtub and turned the shower head on, letting a burst of cold water slap him in the face. He gasped against the shock but didn’t move out of it. 

  
  


Sam crawled over and threw the hot knob on as well, trying to even out the temperature as Dean sunk to the bottom, clothes and all. Sam turned his back to the tub and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulled it out of his face and listened helplessly as Dean gasped frantically in the thundering water.

“We’ll figure it out, Dean,” he said quietly as he stared at the blood on the floor.

  
  


+

  
  


Sam watched his brother from the doorway. Watched the way he favored his left arm, keeping it tight to his body. The way his legs trembled with exhaustion as he stood by his bed washing Cas’ face. Dean was slumped over, barely standing. He wouldn’t take anything for the pain, refused the arm sling, waved off the suggestion of the IV. He was focused. He wanted to get Cas cleaned up. It was a necessary evil of the Winchester mourning process. There were no morticians in their lives. They did the dirty work, all the dirty work, themselves.

Sam sat in the hallway, out of the way and hopefully allowing him enough privacy that he didn’t feel bothered. But, he had to watch him. He was waiting for him to collapse at any moment. Was quite frankly, surprised that he hadn’t already. Adrenaline will do crazy things to someone’s body.

It was around three in the morning. The wind howled outside the brick exterior. Sam was beat. He still sat in his bloodstained t-shirt and jeans. His hair was matted to his head. His body was covered in grimey evaporated sweat. His stomach churned hungry but unsettled. He didn’t want to leave Dean alone. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was on suicide watch. He really wouldn’t put it past him on this night. It was why he’d hid Dean’s weapons. All of them, collected and removed.

Dean was quiet. He’d changed after the shower into some clean clothes, but those were dirtied again after he’d painstakingly carried Cas from the garage to Dean’s bedroom. It took many rests in between and a lot of screaming, but he’d made it by himself, and that seemed to satisfy him for the moment. Now he was about five fingers deep in a new fifth of Johnny Labinsky, and he was calm. Probably on a solid trajectory to comfortably numb.

“You gonna be my shadow all night?” His voice was warmed with whiskey. It was steady again, familiar.

“Not tryn’a bother you. Just here if you need me.”

“I get it, but you don’t have to worry. I ain’t gonna off myself tonight.”

Sam blinked. “Didn’t say you were.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to. I know your _nuthouse nurse_ look when I see it.”

Sam heaved himself out of his chair. His back felt like it was in a million knots.

Dean dropped the pinked washcloth back in the bucket and waved him off. “Go shower or something, you smell like hell.”

_I feel like hell._

_I’ve been through hell._

_You look like hell._

Sam contemplated saying all those things, or even one of them. He just stood quietly. 

“Dude, seriously. Go shower. I’m not going anywhere. I promise I’ll still be here when you get back, either passed out drunk-- if I’m lucky--or still drinking. Okay?”

Sam worked his jaw. Tried to decide what to say. Whether he should say anything at all. He eventually nodded, but kept eyes on Dean, evaluating him, deciding what the level of truth was. 

“I’m not cuttin’ out.” Dean persisted. “I’ll see it finished. I’m not puttin’ it on you.” 

Sam looked at Cas, laid out on Dean’s bed. He was a mess. It was unsettling. Sam knew what Dean meant. He didn’t have to worry about anything until Cas was put to rest, whatever that would encompass. He was gonna clean up his mess. Like he always did.  Until then, Sam was only reassured by the fact that he’d cleared the room. Dean would be pissed when he realized it. Sam might hear about it. He might not. That all depended on whether Dean realized it would give away the game if he asked.

“Dean,” Sam sighed. He was too tired to go another round with his brother. “This isn’t on you. Cas made a choice.”

“Yeah? That’s not the way I see it.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Sam rubbed his eyes. Glanced at the bathroom. “You’d better still be here, or I swear to God.”

“Go shower, Sasquatch.”

Sam retreated down the hallway, his stomach in his throat. 

  
  


Dean watched Sam go. He didn’t turn his attention back to Cas until the bathroom door was shut and locked. He was suddenly intimately aware of the .45 he stowed under his pillow. The idea of it itched his brain, tickled his fingertips. His index finger twitched in the practiced motion. Just a small pull and--

_bang_.

He was right there. He only had to lean over, slip his hand under the pillow, and pull it out. It would be quick. Easy. Painless. 

Then, Sam would get out of the shower, find him. 

He didn’t feel as good about that. 

He shook it out of his head. Looked at Cas. Took a long draw from his tumbler. Let it coat his throat on the way down, biting and kicking at his nerves. He’d need the whole bottle and then some tonight. He picked up the washcloth and wrung it out, then carefully wiped Cas’ cheek. He was getting there. Almost presentable.

His clothes were wrecked. His coat was ruined. Dean would have to change Cas into something of his. His FBI duds would do. It had to be a suit. That wasn’t even debatable. He might even have a blue tie hanging in his closet somewhere. The outfit would probably be a bit big, but it would do the job.

He took another long drink, and sat down in the chair he’d pulled up next to the bed. He felt numb. Not drunk numb, but dead numb. Emotionally bludgeoned. His shoulder screamed whenever he moved, his body was wrought with aches and pains, but he was essentially numb. He reached forward and stroked a finger along Cas’ hand. His eyes burned.

_How could he do this? Why would he just throw himself away?_

Dean closed his eyes and thought about the absent rage on his forearm. It was a foreign feeling after being burdened with it for so long.

_He did it for you, asshole. He did it because of you._

Dean stood back up, glanced at the closed bathroom door down the hall, then crawled onto the bed. He shared Cas’ pillow, looked at him, imagined if he’d just had the balls to do this once-- _Just one fucking time_ \--while Cas was alive. What it would have been like. He wanted to stroke his cheek, but his shoulder wouldn’t let him. He wanted to get up and kiss his face, but his heart wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t Cas anymore. 

Cas was gone.

  
  


+

  
  


The burial went as Sam expected. 

Neither Winchester said much. Dean told Sam to wear a suit. He did. They both dug the grave because Dean couldn’t move his left arm for the life of him, it was pretty well swollen and bruised. Sam told him it was broken. He didn’t seem to care.

It rained.

Dean drank  instead of crying.

  
  


+

  
  


When sleep finally found Dean it was at the bottom of a bottle. He’d drank until the room spun. Until all stubborn insomnia was stolen from him. His body gave up, gave in. He hadn’t slept for at least two days. He’d lost track. Since the incident. Since right before? 

When he woke, it was in his bed. The room was dark, a string of light from under his door bathed his room in a soft glow. He was instantly sure it wasn’t where he’d passed out, though he couldn’t recall the last place he was. Sam must have found him, carried him to his room. Poor Sammy. Just trailing the hurricane. Trying to keep enough pieces of Dean together to keep him functional.

The bedroom door suddenly creaked and popped open, more light from the hallway spilling into the room. Dean blinked his eyes against it.

Sam was coming to check on him. Dean wondered if he was getting any sleep at all, or if he was just mother henning twenty-four seven. He couldn’t keep that up. Dean shouldn’t be his responsibility.

“Go back to bed.” Dean’s voice was thick and graveled with liquor and sleep. “I’m fine.”

The door pushed open further and revealed a slender silhouette against the hallway.

Not Sam. Too slim. Too short. Not enough mane. Dean reached his good arm under his pillow, but grasped nothing. His gun was gone.

His mind raced. _Where the fuck is it?_ He realized almost as quickly that Sam must have taken it. Removing all the EZ Pass checkout methods from places he couldn’t watch him as closely.

_Son of a bitch._

The sudden patter of dirt crumbling to the floor jogged his racing mind. He squinted in vain at the shadowclad face. His adrenaline suddenly surged as the smell of earth and rain hit him like a brick wall. The smell from the morning. The burial. The same smell as Cas’ gravesite. The vegetative patch of overgrowth near the bunker, the nearby stream, the rich, untilled winter dirt that had been so hard to dig up, frozen about a foot down.

His heart hit his ribcage and the surge of blood sent aching shivers through his arm. “Cas?”

Castiel pushed into the room quickly, toward Dean. Dean had just enough time to scramble off the bed before Cas was on  him, wrapping his hands around his head, dragging his fingers through the prickled hairs at the nape of his neck. 

“How?” Dean gasped.

Castiel’s hair was a disheveled mess. Dirt clung to his oversized suit, smudged his face, left lines around his eyes where he’d squinted against the crumbling spills as he’d dug from his own grave. His tie was up over his shoulder.

“How?” 

Cas fell into him. Knocked him back onto the bed. Pushed himself on top of Dean, bearing him into the mattress with his weight. His eyes searched Dean, the blue of them deepened in the shadows but bleeding an animalistic lustre. Dean grunted as his shoulder hit the bed, his good hand sandwiched in the middle of their bodies. Cas’ hands brushed down the sides of Dean’s neck, down onto his chest, skirting his broken shoulder. His nose tickled along Dean’s jaw, sweeping lightly against his skin. Then, Cas kissed his neck. His breath hot against Dean. His tongue wet. His teeth brazen. 

“Cas--” Dean jumped, caught by surprise, uneasy. His stomach dropped out. His skin hackled against Cas’ touch.

Cas turned, his lips hovered above Dean’s. Dean could feel the heat radiating off of him. His breath caught, held like fire in his chest as Cas lingered there. Then, Cas arched away, back over to Dean’s neck, licking him instead, his quick tongue sending a wave of fear and pleasure into Dean.

Cas raked his fingers through Dean’s hair, grabbed a handful of it, jerked his head to the side, sucked hard on his exposed neck. 

Dean gasped sharply.

“What are you--”

Castiel moved over his lips again. Brushed him lightly with his own, caught the swell of his bottom lip with his teeth and nipped at it, then he kissed him. His lips soft, his intention voracious. His hands cupped Dean’s face, his body trapped Dean’s good hand. They locked together like two puzzle pieces. Dean’s heart thrummed in his ears. His face lit hot.

Dean moaned, then pulled away unsure, scrambling his trapped hand against Cas. He tried to look at him, tried to get his bearings. “Wait,” he said breathlessly. He wanted to see his face. He _needed_ to talk to him.

Castiel’s hands floated down over the sides of Dean’s torso, his fingers brushed up under his shirt, fingernails dragging against his skin. Teasing at his waistband, he dipped just inside the fabric, scraping at the hollow of Dean’s hipbones.

Dean moved against his hands, coming up suddenly to meet Castiel’s mouth, to sink into him ravenously. Their tongues licked together, his breath nothing but earth. Dean caught himself again and pulled away. “Wait, Cas,” he gasped. He tried to wiggle his arm free, to stop him.

Cas melted into Dean, his rough chin dragging over Dean’s neck. Cas kissed him again, hard. As if six years of almosts were powering it. His fingers toyed at Dean’s waistband, popped the button. Dean’s mind slipped willingly into it, he nipped Cas’ lip, kissed him back, licked at him, managed his hand free from under Cas’s body and threaded a handful of hair through his fingers, pulling it, gasping into him. “Cas.”

Dirt crumbled off of Castiel. Plopped around Dean on the bed.

Dean stalled, came back to reality. “Hang on,” he said breathlessly. His heart hammered in his chest.

Cas’ hands slid up under his shirt, warm against Dean’s stomach, then they slid to his sides as he moved to kiss Dean again. Dean halted him this time, propping him up and away from his body with his good arm. “I said stop.” 

Conviction finally stuck. 

Dean panted in the silence.

Cas’s hands fell away, his expression solemn. He looked down at Dean, the dark shadows cutting through his soft expression. He blinked, searched Dean’s face.

“Dean,” he whispered into the dark. His voice was void of its usual warm gravel, it was an eerie shell of its former self. “I die for you and you still keep me at arm’s length.”

Dean’s breath hitched, his eyes teared. Suddenly he felt a flood of hot blood on him, washing over him, soaking into his clothes, just like in the grocery store. It dripped down from Castiel, through his black suit, burning like guilt and shame on Dean’s skin. He gasped, caught a scream in the back of his throat--

\--Dean shot up in bed drenched in his own sweat. His shoulder condemned the jolted movement. The residual dream clung to his conscious, and the scream escaped him. He muffled it with his hand, gasped into the dark, into the suffocating, blackness of his room.

_Oh, God. Please don’t hear, Sam. Please don’t hear._

He watched the door, waited for footsteps. None came and he choked back a sob. His blood throbbed in his ears, a headache knocked behind his eyes. 

He could still see the blood.

His body shivered. The room swayed as the whiskey filtered back into his conscious mind. Bloody Castiel faded into a ghost image and dissipated in the dark leaving only Dean’s guilt behind. 

It was enough to drown in. 

It was enough rope to hang himself with. 

He felt the shame in the pit of his stomach like he’d swallowed a handful of bees. 

But mostly, he felt the loneliness.

  
  


+

  
  


Sam kicked back at the kitchen table and stirred his oatmeal, stretching one long leg over a neighboring chair. He ticked through the morning’s news bulletins in Web Search, and scanned lazily for something interesting as he tried to wake up. 

_Regular murder. Regular murder. Assault…_

The clock in the lower corner of his screen ticked to 5:30 AM _._

Dean suddenly plodded through the kitchen and Sam looked up surprised.  He’d only been out around four hours, and Sam had expected longer than that with the sleep aid he’d slipped him.  Sam’s unease only grew with the mechanical way Dean moved, his eyes fixed at the floor, his head down as if he were just powering through the the next obstacle.

“You okay?” Sam dropped his foot from the chair and trailed after him.

Dean poked through the fridge and came out with a beer. He hesitated at the counter as he tried to figure out how to hold the bottle and open it with one hand, then he just hooked it at the bottom of a cabinet handle and let leverage do the work for him. The cap popped off and clinked onto the floor.

Sam watched him. “How’s your shoulder?” He saw the way the bags under Dean’s eyes weren’t just dark, but haunted. His cat-tailed hair and wrinkled clothes looked like he’d been trying to fight his way out of a box all night. And his shoulder, the swelling was down to his elbow, visible at the bottom of his t-shirt sleeves, bruised in deep purple and red, held gingerly up against him. His eyes screamed everytime he bent, shifted, or twitched. The wrap probably needed to be changed. Sam should look at it. It was probably bled through but he couldn’t tell under the black shirt.

Dean kicked back the beer and drained it in one go, then tossed the bottle into the sink. He turned and pulled another from the fridge.

“Rough Night?” Sam tried again.

Dean ignored him, popped the cap and tossed the bottle back, chugging half of it without pause.

“Hey, easy there, Bonham!” Sam grabbed the beer from him, pulling it from his hand. 

Dean wiped the spatter from his face and glared.

“You wanna start with some bacon, or were we just gonna lead with Cirrhosis today?”

Dean clenched his jaw and turned back to the fridge pulling it open. Sam slapped the door shut and stood in front of it. “Talk to me, Dean.”

“What?” Dean spat venom. 

His glare ate through Sam. “What’s going on?” Sam kept his voice soft, his tone even.

“You mean beside the usual shit?”

“I mean what’s going on today? You look worse than you did last night.”

“Yeah,” Dean scoffed. He walked around Sam and started heading out.

“Dean.” Sam cut him off, almost caught him by the bad arm. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

“You can’t help me anyway, Sam. There ain’t nothin’ you can do.”

Sam shuffled his feet, looked around, thought about Cas’ bloody body laid out on Dean’s bed. “Maybe if you slept in the front room for a couple nights,” he suggested.

Sam saw by the tell in Dean’s eyes that he’d pegged it on the head. Dean was having nightmares. Like after Hell. After Cas turned from a solid to a liquid. Only they’d shared a hotel room back then, so Dean wasn’t alone. Now if he woke up screaming, there wasn’t anyone there to snap him out of it. “I could stay out here with you. There’s plenty of room on the couches if you give me the long one.”

Dean shut his eyes, swallowed and looked at Sam with disdain. “You wanna help? Gimme my .45  back.”

Dean’s pause was solid and sincere. There was no doubt in the look he gave Sam. It was as certain as anything Sam had seen. 

_Gimme my weapon so I can blow my fucking brains out already._

Sam didn’t know what to say, it was new territory. He just let the comment hang unaddressed until Dean turned and stormed off to his room again.

Sam grabbed his half eaten bowl of oatmeal off the table and tossed it in the sink. He had to do something. Look for something that would help Dean. False hope might be better than where he was right now. He couldn’t do anything about the people. Maybe he could do something about Cas.

He headed off to the library, full head and empty heart.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Part III**

  
  


_Call an optimist, she's turning blue_

_Such a lovely color for you_

_Call it aftermath, she's turning blue_

_While I just sit and stare at you_

_I don't want to know_

_~”Blue” A Perfect Circle_

  
  
  


The shock of blood was the first thing Castiel registered.

He blinked as he looked down at his body soaked and ripped and broken. Dean sat over him yelling his name, shaking him, stroking his face. 

“Dean,” he said quietly. He bent down, tried to touch him, his hands passed through, his voice went unnoticed. Castiel blinked again confused, looked at his hands. He felt strange.

“What did I tell you, Castiel?”

Cas whipped around. The reaper stood there smiling. The same reaper. The wide forehead, dark shadowed eyes, petulant smile. “What did you tell me, brother?” he asked carefully.

“You had a soul after all. Didn’t you?”

“How?”

“I don’t deal the cards. I only clear the table.”

Cas stood, faced the reaper, frowned. “Where are you taking me then?”

“Can’t give it away.”

“I don’t care to play your games. Is it Heaven or Hell?”

The reaper stared at him, his face unchanging.

Castiel turned back to Dean. He was quiet now, staring straight ahead. 

He was not well. 

Dean’s body shivered violently, his face was sickly pale. Cas feared for him. He wanted to touch his shoulder, cup his face, make him look at him. Tell him it was okay. But he couldn’t. He was dead. Just not dead and gone, as he’d expected. 

“And if I stay instead?”

Cas already knew how it worked for humans. He wondered if that meant he was somehow human now, in essence. Did he have the same choices available to him? Could he stay and watch over Dean as a ghost like Bobby had? 

“I’m afraid you don’t have that option.”

Castiel frowned, squinted, tried to understand. Tried again to brush his thumb along Dean’s jaw, wipe away the tears.

Sam suddenly burst through the storeroom door, he shuffled at the threshold, his jaw dropped. Cas watched him slowly approach his brother, taking it in. He fumbled his gun, started to raise it, then belted it absently.

Castiel watched him. Watched the way he squatted down next to Dean, grabbed his face, pulled his attention. The three of them were together, only the Winchester’s didn’t know that.

“Are you with me, Dean?” Sam asked. His voice was distraught. 

Cas saw Dean’s eyes slowly register. He looked at Sam but didn’t seem to recognize him. He nodded anyway. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Hey, you’re okay.”

Castiel watched Sam wipe the blood from Dean’s face and smiled. Dean would be alright. He had his brother. They would always be alright as long as they had each other.

Cas laced his fingers over the handprint he’d left on Dean’s chest. He felt the scar under his shirt, even if he couldn’t interact with it. It was a little piece of him and it radiated against him. He remembered leaving one the first time. It had been an accident.

Cas had been a little too juiced up as he rescued Dean’s soul from hell, and he’d scarred him. He’d felt guilty about it later, when he found out, it was the reason he’d cured it. But, Dean had always seemed a little disappointed. So Cas wanted to put it back, this time over his heart, where it belonged. Where it should have been all along.

Dean suddenly looked at him, not through him, but at him. Their eyes locked together. Castiel felt a rush of electricity. “Dean,” he said. 

He could feel Dean’s soul. How it buzzed in unison with Castiel’s, suddenly connected like the flip of a light switch.

Dean mouthed Cas’ name. His voice was caught somewhere in his throat. He brushed a shivering hand to his chest, tried to touch Castiel’s, but fell through him instead.

Sam suddenly moved, blocked them, pulled Dean’s attention. “We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”

Dean’s eyes darted around, looking. He didn’t seem to know exactly what for.  “I--I, uh. I think Cas is dead, Sammy.” He looked through Cas again. They’d lost each other. 

Just a fever hallucination now.

Castiel’s hand fell from Dean’s chest. He heard Sam tell Dean that he was gone, that they’d lost him. He saw Dean cry. Sam took over. Castiel backed away. 

He stood and watched them. The Winchesters. His family. He saw the devastation they faced. The desperation that was corroding Dean. Cas felt sick. “Do you think he’ll be alright?” He asked.

The reaper regarded them. Watched Sam heave his brother to standing, Dean fall back down. “Is Dean Winchester ever alright?” He replied as he grabbed Castiel’s shoulder.

  
  


+

  
  


His cell was still blinking with those unchecked texts from Cas. The ones sent days ago. The ones Dean had been fiddling to check on a near constant basis. Only, he couldn’t bring himself to read them. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the last thing Cas had to say. Dean was rogue at the time he’d sent them. It was probably a plead for him to come back, or a warning to stop.  Instead, Dean discarded the phone on his nightstand where it could loom ominously over him everytime he caught it in the corner of his eye.

Dean felt the rough patches of blood where it had soaked and dried into the trenchcoat. Of course he’d kept it; the coat. It was Cas’. It was… _the coat_. It was the whole story of Castiel from the moment he touched down on earth to the moment he left it. The bloodstains and knife tear were just morbid reminders of how it ended, they weren’t the whole of it. Dean could see past the bloody death. Past the mistakes, poor decisions, and misgivings. He looked at the coat and just saw Cas. His friend. His family. His…

Dean hesitated, shifted and took a long drink from his tumbler. The fifth of Johnnie Walker was about set to retire. All but gone except for a couple fingers. He was painfully aware of the absence on the bed. He thought it would be easier to be in his room once Cas got planted, but it seemed harder somehow. And then there was that dream. 

That didn’t help.

He almost glanced at the door to assure himself that Cas wasn’t standing there. But, it was still daytime and his monsters usually waited til his head hit the pillow.

His shoulder throbbed, the swelling had spread. He couldn’t even think about moving it without it singing. The bandage Sam had thrown on was soaked through, the wound was weeping, the whole situation was getting out of hand. He knew he had to get to the hospital. He was being an idiot. He was gonna lose functionality of his damn arm if he kept being a stubborn SOB about it. In the light of day, he saw how it really wouldn’t work, being a one-armed hunter. He’d be an easy kill. 

He rubbed his chest absently, the raised scar beneath his shirt tacit under the fabric, realizing in the same moment that he wasn’t sure he cared all that much. He shook his head, took another draw and ran the glass dry. The liquor warmed the edges of his vision, blurred it, comforted him. 

Maybe if he could just drink enough, his chest wouldn’t feel so empty. His nerves wouldn’t feel so frayed. He’d stop seeing Cas’ bloody face in his mind, or hearing him gasp out words as he died. 

Maybe Dean wouldn’t remember the feeling of the knife piercing into Cas’ body, or that heartbreaking look that crossed his eyes when it had. Maybe he could erase that horrible feeling of excitement he’d gotten from it at the time. That sick, all-encompassing erotic lust that had infected him. 

Fortunately, that’s when the spell flipped off the lights.  By the time he woke, he felt as if he was exploding. Like someone was trying to stuff something three times too big into him and his organs were getting tossed to make room. But the real pain, the one in his shoulder, grabbed him, grounded him, broke the psychological barrier of the spell. And the Mark’s  parasitic hold of Dean dissipated, tingling out like a spilled jar of pennies. 

But, he didn’t really come to until he saw the blood. He would have screamed if he could’ve found breath. He remembered waking up soaked in it. A sticky, grotesque film of it, coating into every crevice of his skin. It felt like a death mask on his face. And for that moment, having no idea what he’d done, but knowing he’d done something really bad this time.

That’s when he noticed the trenchcoat. He would recognize it anywhere, like a guiding hand to safety, security, companionship. Bloodied and hollowed out at his side, Dean didn’t even have to think about sitting up before he was. Before his hands were on Cas, desperately pulling at him, shaking him, wholly terrified at what he saw.

_Not Cas. No, please not Cas._

He’d mechanically tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late for that. Way too late. And then he was left holding his dead friend and the broken pieces of his life. What was, what wasn’t, what could have been… 

Dean closed his eyes, his breath suddenly choking his chest. He wanted to throw up. He set the glass down and picked up the bottle instead, drinking the rest of it. It burned and fought its way down his throat as he swallowed without reprieve. He bit back the sharp kick as it hit his sinuses and churned his stomach.

But all the drinks in the world, all the shots and all the tumblers full wouldn’t be enough to erase Cas’ face, or fill that gaping hole in Dean’s heart. He stroked the coat again, fumbled the bottle and dropped it. The room swayed around him. 

He remembered the feel of Cas under his coat, whenever he had excuse to touch him. The flex of his muscles under the fabric, the way it hung on his toned body, framing him like a work of art. How on more occasions than Dean could count, he imagined reaching inside the coat, sliding his hands along Cas’ body, coming in close to him. How would it feel? What would he do? Would they finally kiss?

Then there was the last night’s dream. It had been horrible and wonderful in so many ways. Painful and pleasurable. Ultimately, it was just a tease of what Dean could have had. It was just a reminder that he was too fucked up to ever try something he genuinely believed would make him happy. And who was he kidding? It probably would have made Cas happy too. He was smart enough to read that look in his eyes. He had just been too stupid to do anything about it. 

And now Cas was gone. Because of him. Because of his bad-fucking-decisions. His friend, companion, family… _love,_ had just sacrificed himself to stop Dean. To keep him from killing more people, from wreaking havoc and becoming the monster he’d begged not to become. The only reason Dean was sitting there pickling his liver right then was because Cas had made that choice. He put Dean ahead of himself. Again. Over, and over, and over Dean had asked him to do that. And it was wrong. It was so wrong.

It shouldn’t be like this. Dean should be the one snug tight in an 84 by 28 inch box. He honestly wasn’t sure how he was supposed to ever get over this. 

And didn’t mean move on--he was sure he would never move on--but get over the crippling guilt. He couldn’t get over it. He was damn guilty. No matter how it came about, No matter the circumstances, Cas was dead by his hand.

_I just fucked up too big this time._

He staggered from his chair and set the coat on the bed before shuffling through the chest of drawers on the other side of his room. He brought out another fifth of whiskey and looked at the golden glow of it in the lamplight. 

_Bottoms up_. 

He glanced again at the nightstand. To the blinking cell.

_Four new texts from Cas_.

He considered the bottle in his hand, propped it between his thighs and twisted the top. Whiskey dribbled down his arm and plodded onto the carpet. He took a large swallow, let it shiver through him, then dropped back into the chair.

He fingered the phone. Watched it warble on the wood top. He imagined Cas punching the text in, hunched over the phone, both hands wrapped around the old-style flip keyboard. 

_Fuck it_ , he thought grabbing it. He took another drink before opening the text.

_I can’t keep my promise, I’m sorry. -C_

_I won’t let you die. -C_

_Please forgive me. -C_

_Please forgive yourself. -C_

  
  


+

  
  


Sam was empty handed. He looked at the outrageous castoff of books he’d just spent the last three hours toiling through. Men of Letters Archives, lore, philosophy, even art history, and he had nothing. No leads. No semblance of direction. Nothing. There just wasn’t any text on angelic resurrection.

He knew why. He just didn’t want to admit it. He rubbed his hands over his face and sat back. He felt the weight of his eyelids as the morning grew brighter with the sunrise. He glanced his watch,

_seventy-two hours and counting_. 

Three days now since the grocery store and he’d probably only slept around five hours  total. But, Dean still had his feet on the ground, so it wasn’t totally fornot. 

_Speaking of…_ it was getting time to check on him again. Hopefully he was asleep, probably he was drinking. Sam managed to collect a lot of the hard stuff before Dean could squirrel it away, but he was sure he’d gotten through all the beer in the fridge by now at the very least. Especially since Sam had been tucked in the library for the past few hours.

He didn’t know what he was going to tell him. He wanted to go see Dean with something, anything, to talk to him about. Preferably something to convince him that Cas was at peace with his decision.

_Well, not at peace with it, but he’d accepted it._

He remembered his conversation with Cas before the floor dropped out and everything went to hell. In the library, what now seemed like a lifetime ago, Cas across from him in the slatted wood chair, cellphone in one hand and Book of the Damned in the other.

  
  


“No, Cas. Blood sacrifice is bad mojo on a good day, I can only imagine what would happen if we invoked it to cure the Mark of Cain.”

“It’s not ritualist blood sacrifice,” Cas stumbled. He looked at the book and thought about tossing it to Sam but didn’t. “It’s different.”

“Oh, well, I guess I misheard you then when you said the spell required a blood sacrifice.”

“No, you heard correctly. It does.”

Sam pushed back in his chair and groaned tugging his hair away from his face. “Wanna explain it to me then, Cas?”

Castiel looked strangely at Sam, shame flitting through his face as he bit nervously at his lower lip. He slid the book across the table. “The dog eared pages,” he said.

Sam flipped the book open looked blankly at the two page spread, the chant on one side in Enochian, the sigil and spell notes in Latin on the other. Sam’s Enochian wasn’t great without a translator, but his Latin was pretty en pointe. “Says _cum sanguinis_ right on it. ‘ _with blood’,”_ he pointed _._ Then, the section head caught his eye. _Cantus Amoris et ad Sacrificium Curarent_ , _Spells of Love and Sacrifice to Cure_. His heart plodded in his chest, and he looked up. “Love sacrifice, Cas?”

Castiel looked back at him unblinking. “It’s the most powerful curing spell I’ve ever seen.”

Sam stumbled over his thoughts. He started and stopped a couple times, then just looked back at him frustrated. “Cas,” he said finally. “He wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“Then what would you have me do, Sam? Shall we just leave him to be consumed by the Mark? Let him slowly turn into the creature he begged us to prevent?”

“No, but--”

“What he wants is for me to kill him.” Cas fiddled with his phone, tried the call button paused as it rang and shot to voicemail. “And I can’t. I won’t.”

Sam scanned the page, then set it down, relenting. “Do you die?” he asked quietly.

Castiel’s face was stern, but the hitch in his chest gave him away. “Yes.”

Sam held his breath, he fought back the tears that threatened him. “Tell him first,” he said. “ You have to tell him first, Cas. You can’t---he’s not gonna…” Sam looked desperately back at the angel. He had too many things he wanted to say, all of them were failing him.

Cas flipped to the texts on his phone and looked down at it frowning. “I’m trying,” he said. The warble in his voice told Sam how uneasy the idea was. 

Sam shook his head, internally screaming. Send them to war, shove a gun in their faces, jab a blade in their flesh, none of it frightened them. Confessing their love, though? Terrifying. The fear of rejection turned their heels every single time. 

“Is he here?” Cas asked suddenly. “Why is he not answering?”

It was then that they realized he’d gone rogue. Out of the bunker, not answering his calls. The grocery store was only a day later.

  
  


Sam grabbed the little red book and flipped it open. 

_Cantus Amoris et ad Sacrificium Curarent._

He decided the easiest thing to do would be to translate the pages for Dean and give him the book. He’d obviously not gotten Cas’ confession before everything went down, and that was killing him. Sam didn’t know how to approach it, didn’t even know if it would make things better or worse. He only knew that Dean needed to know, that he had a right to. Maybe after reading the spell he could put the pieces together himself. Fit them in whatever spaces needed filled.

He grabbed a red pen off the tabletop and started translating. He wanted to take all the difficulty out of it, make it easily readable. And if Sam translated it for him, maybe Dean would also understand that Sam knew, that it was okay, that Dean was allowed to love the angel like he did.

Maybe that would help pull him up a little.

  
  


+

  
  


Castiel felt like he was suffocating in the swallowing blackness. 

“Where is this?” 

His voice reverberated in his own ears but the space seemed neither hollow nor dense.

“This is where you wait,” the reaper replied.

Castiel searched for him, but could only see the blackness. He sounded both near and far all at once. 

“This isn’t heaven nor hell. It isn’t purgatory, either. Where have you taken me?”

“This is where you wait, Castiel.”

“What does that mean? Wait?”

“You’re an unclaimed soul. You are no longer alive, but you cannot be put to rest yet, so you must wait.”

Cas blinked. Hoped to see something. His eyes registered nothing. He was blinded.

“What am I waiting for?”

“To be claimed.”

“By what? Or whom?” 

Cas wanted to reach a hand out, touch the reaper, assure himself that he wasn’t imagining the conversation, assure himself that it was real. But he was too afraid of the answer.

“Your soulmate.”

Castiel swallowed. “What? Since when do angels have souls? Or soulmates?”

“They usually don’t.”

“Then, why do I?”

A sudden flicker of light ignited in front of him and his eyes snapped shut against it. The reaper’s face illuminated in the darkness just arm’s reach from him, his eyes burning from inside their dark sockets. “What was the spell?”

Cas shook his head, looked at the reaper, squinted. “You mean the curing spell?”

“No, Castiel. It was a _binding_ spell. You are bound to your host. Now you must wait here for him to die.”

“What?” Castiel shook his arm to summon his angel blade, an ingrained and mindless motion at this point. Of course he had no angel blade anymore he was dead. Even if he wasn’t, Sam had taken it.

“I’m not threatening him, brother,” the reaper chuckled. “You simply asked what you were waiting for.”

  
  


+

  
  


_I fucking knew it was bad mojo._

Sam sprang from his chair, checking his own balance as he reeled back and grabbed the book and notes. He rushed from the library, down the hallway to the rooms.

The translations had revealed something about the spell he hadn’t expected. He was thrilled to be able to tell Dean that Cas might be retrievable, but disturbed by the last cautionary line of text. 

“ _Be warned, to carry the weight of another is with a heavy heart.”_

Sam wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but if he took a stab it meant there was an added psychological burden to the spell, and that would go further to explain why Dean was so far out of character. So suicidal. So lacking in fight. They’d been in the dumps before, many times. But Dean never went down without swinging, and he hadn’t to this point even tried to look for a solution to the dead Cas problem. He hadn’t sought care for his fucked shoulder. He wouldn’t talk to Sam. It was all wrong. 

There was mourning, and then there was Dean mourning. This, simply put, was not how he mourned.

Sam knocked and waited. He knocked again. 

“Dean?”

He tried the knob. Locked.

“Dean, can I talk to you for a second?” He paused. “It’s about Cas. He-- he might not be gone. He might be… I think we might be able to get him back.”

Nothing.

“Dean?” 

A bad feeling suddenly overwhelmed him. He shouldered the door. It stuck. He hauled back and kicked it with his booted foot, it jumped in the frame but didn’t open. 

Again. This time he felt the force in his knee, shocking through him. The frame cracked and the door popped off the jamb.

Sam stumbled through the threshold and the sick smell of alcohol and vomit slapped him in the face. Dean was slumped forward in the chair, empty glass bottles piled on his nightstand, a mostly bled fifth still gripped loosely at his side. 

“Dean!”

Sam rushed to the chair, heaved Dean back and looked at him. His face was pale, clammy. His lips tinged blue. Breath rasped in and out of him like water through a jar of marbles. 

“Hey, wake up!” Sam slapped his face, waited for a response. Dean didn’t register it. Sam slapped him harder, watched a red handprint bloom on his cheek, Dean’s lulled eyes twitched and unhooded. Dilated and lost in the swing of the alcohol-induced carnival ride, he couldn’t seem to focus. Perpetually following the perceived movement of the room. “Dean, how much did you drink?”

Dean’s eyes melted in slow long blinks. His breath caught in his chest and Sam was almost sure it wouldn’t rasp out again. But, it did, clunky and thick. He choked back a gag, and threw himself forward, head hanging over the floor retching. Sam realized then that he was kneeling in a pool of vomit and moved out of it. 

“Dean, I need to know how much you drank.” He watched the drool string from Dean’s lip as he struggled, gasping and gagging. 

“Too much ‘er not enough,” he garbled at last.

“Like, bad hunt too much, or bad bender too much?”

Dean swallowed, jaw wobbling. His eyes lost hold and rolled back in his head. Sam shook him. “Hey, no sleeping. I need you to answer me!”

Dean swallowed and handed the bottle beside him to Sam. “Third one,” he said.

Sam felt his heart punch his ribs. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dean?”  He looked at the sad amount left in the bottle. Probably wouldn’t fill a shooter. Three fifths in three hours? Not good. Very not good. Even for Dean’s tolerance level. “I gotta get you to the ER right now. What the hell is the matter with you?”

Dean blindly slapped a hand on Sam’s chest. Patted him. “Where to start?”

As if on cue, he started to shiver. The liquor was taking over, bringing his body temperature down, repressing his organ function. He likely had more liquor waiting like a time bomb queued to filter through his liver, and even more still sitting in his stomach, yet to be digested. 

_He’s gonna die_. Sam could feel it in the back of his brain, gnawing like a hungry rat. _Go get the shovel, cuz it’s time to plant more family._

Sam’s breath trembled out of him. His hands shook, his fingers felt cold. He touched Dean’s throat felt his pulse. Weak and thready. He listened to the air struggle out of him, slower and slower. 

Sam needed help. Needed to bide time to get Dean to the hospital.

What did he have? Anything in the bunker that could help? A lot of first aid supplies, mostly for trauma wounds. Quikclot, gauze, bandages. Needles, floss, suture tape, glue--

_Drinking yourself to death is a trauma wound, I guess_. 

Sam couldn’t stop the thought from dragging through his mind. 

Of course it wasn’t all Dean’s fault, not really. Sam had read the spell. He knew there was an emphasized burden associated with it.He would be willing to bet the added stress from the spell was just enough to push his brother’s fragile psyche over the edge. 

_He didn’t shoot himself, at least._

Sam couldn’t stop the image of dead Dean with brain splattered all over the bedroom from crossing his mind either. Like a sick snuff film. He shook it out. Tried to bury it with all the real images of his dead brother. File it away in the nightmare box.

\--Then, he had emergency survival gear. Freeze-dried food, Mylar blanket, hatchet.

_Maybe the blanket._

A couple packs of IV fluid and a small stash of blood for emergency transfusions. But, in all honesty, Sam knew the blood needed to be thrown out. 

_IV bag is good. Flush the toxins out. Rehydrate, if possible._

Dean shivered, eyes rolling up into his eyelids then bouncing back down again. His chest sounded like it was full of gravel.  “I miss him, Sam.” His voice was airy and strained. Broken and lost.

Sam cupped his brother’s face watched as he started to cry. Bit back his own flush of hot tears. His heart ached for him. For just the fact that he had to be deathly drunk to finally say it outloud. “You idiot,” he said.

The problem was, Dean had no idea what he’d done. Near as Sam could tell, Cas was linked to him, but that was contingent on Dean being _alive_. Normally it might not matter. The souls link. The people both die. The souls move on to their final resting place. Then, of course, the regular Winchester false steps and rutted roads could be taken. Angelic resurrection, demon deal, reaper on a leash. The usual. But, Cas didn’t have a spirit--wasn’t a spirit, whichever. He was an angel. With or without his own grace. That was his species. Sam was afraid if he were to get separated from Dean, through death, he would be lost for good. Unobtainable. Absorbed in the starlight waiting for God to get bored and pull the Play-Doh back out to sculpt himself some more toys, like an entitled child. “Ok,” he said quietly. “But you can’t get him back if you’re dead. So hang on, you understand?”

  
  


Sam didn’t feel good about leaving him, but he had to get the first aid kit. He ripped out of Dean’s room and down the hall. His feet pounded the bare floor and echoed off the bunker walls, but he didn’t hear it. He could only hear his heart in his ears.

He slid into the bathroom, threw open the cabinet under the sink and tossed out the few things in front of the first aid box. _Shaving kit, extra shampoo, bars of soap_. He pulled out the kit, undid the latch and looked at it, raking his fingers through the supplies, trying to see what was in there before he got back to the room and had something essential missing.

He saw the needles, the package of tubing, the tape. _No IV fluid_. He ravaged through the rest of the sink, threw out the towels, a pack of razors, some old clothes. No fluids. He stood, almost brained himself on the sink edge and looked in the medicine cabinet above.

_Aspirin, Tylenol, Vicodin, something in an unmarked prescription_ \-- The bottles rattled out, falling into the sink, bouncing, rolling out of sight. _Fuck!_ Sam looked around trying to think of where else they kept the supplies. _Maybe we used it?_ He couldn’t remember plugging an IV into anyone recently. But, it was possible it was in the Impala. _Not enough time for that._

He wasn’t sure how much help it was going to be at this point, but he grabbed the makeshift kit anyway and hauled it back to the room. It would be better to have it than not.

As he turned back in the room, Dean was slumped over in the chair, quiet. Head hanging off the side in just a way that seemed like his neck was broken. Sam stumbled next to him and lifted his head. His eyes were closed, no breath rasped from his chest. 

“Dean?”

Sam slapped his face. No response. Sam listened. Waited for the unnerving sound of marbles to struggle from his lungs. “Dean!” His fingers prodded desperately at his neck. Felt around for a pulse. He didn’t find one. He bit back his nerves and tried a different place. 

Nothing. 

The blue of his skin made him look like a corpse.

“No, no, no, no.” Sam shook him. Tried his pulse again. “God damnit, Dean.”

His mind raced, trying to remember what to do. Grasping at the remnants of CPR training he’d had years before. He grabbed Dean under the arms and drug him from the chair, laying him out on the bedroom floor. He swept a finger through Dean’s mouth to check for an obstruction. He listened again for breathing and felt again for pulse.

“You’re not allowed to die,” he said breathlessly. “No one else is allowed to die.” He closed his eyes, tried to picture the CPR instruction chart stuffed in a bag in the back of the Impala. A booklet Sam had picked up from a school fair over a decade ago.

He positioned himself above his brother, laced his fingers together and centered the heels of his hands on his chest. Straightening his arms, he pressed down. 

“One, two, three, four, five, six…” 

He watched Dean’s body bob with the pumps of compressions. He held his breath, hoping for Dean to suddenly jump back to life. Start breathing. Yell something. Complain.

_Anything._

“...sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…”

Sam’s body shivered with adrenaline. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. Against the dread that was settling in there.

Quick pumps. Two inches down.

He ignored the creak of Dean’s ribs against the force. He ignored the jarring angle of Dean’s arm despite the bullet wound, something he should be cringing against. He ignored the deathly pallor of his face or waxy glow of his skin. 

Because if he thought about it, focused on it, he was going to lose it. He was going to get buried in the trauma of all the other times he’d not been able to save Dean. All the other times he’d carried his corpse from point A to point B. Cried. Made deals. Dug his own grave while simultaneously digging Dean’s.

All those times he never told Dean about. When the bitter taste of the muzzle of his gun was preferable to the whiskey in his shot glass.

He counted to thirty then tilted Dean’s head back and gave a quick rescue breath. He fought back the gagging smell of liquor and vomit. Started compressions again.

_One, two, three, four, five…_

A sob escaped him. Fear raked at him. Claws sharp and penetrating. He could almost taste the gunpowder residue on the muzzle. It tasted like peace. Like tranquility. Like the end of the road.

_Go get the shovel, Sammy._

  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Part IV**

  
  


_Shrouding all the ground around me_

_Is the holy crow above me._

_Black as holes within a memory_

_And blue as our new second sun._

_I stick my hand into his shadow_

_To pull the pieces from the sand._

_Which I attempt to reassemble_

_To see just who I might have been._

_I do not recognize the vessel,_

_But the eyes seem so familiar._

_~ “Third Eye” Tool_

  
  


Dean was quiet as he sat at the edge of his bed head in hands. The bunker was dark. Black. The kind of engulfing void of color that only existed in his own mind. The room was illuminated by a tiny lamp on the nightstand behind him. The cast shadows it created stretched like bars across the room.

Dean remembered. 

He knew where he really was. That he was actually getting intimately acquainted with the topography of his bedroom floor.

He could still see scared Sam talking to him. He felt himself trying to speak between waves of sick and suffocation and seizing muscles. He could remember the burn of vomit in his nose. The smell of liquor like cologne in a department store; repulsive and inescapable. He felt his heart slowing in his chest. Drowning as the tide in his veins turned in favor of the whiskey. 

But, now there was silence. He could think. His head was clear, free, sober. Sam was gone. Stuck _outside_ struggling to glue the pieces of Dean back together faster than they were falling apart. 

A Sisyphean effort if ever there was one.

He rubbed his hands down his face and snuffed a groan in the back of his throat. He waited for his reaper. He assumed he wasn’t dead yet. He had enough experience with it by now. If he were dead he’d be having an out of body experience. Basically doing his best Patrick Swayze impression next to Sam as he watched the trainwreck of horrible decisions unfold.

Instead he was in the silence.

He looked over at the door. Sincerely hoped to see Cas walk in. Real or imagined. It didn’t matter which. Just as long as he got one more chance to hold him. One more chance to say he was sorry. No matter how fake or self indulgent it was.

The room darkened, swallowed up by a grim weight. The light behind Dean flickered, buzzed. 

It wasn’t Castiel who stepped from the shadows, but Death.

“Not the most poetic way to go, is it?” he said as he straightened the front of his black suit. 

Dean lowered his hands, looked back at Death and frowned. He stood slowly. Felt the knot in his stomach grow like a stage four tumor. 

Death side-eyed him. A smile flit across his face. Neither of them in any hurry. No borrowed time to waste.

“Just cut out the middleman and came yourself, huh?”

Death shrugged. “You entertain me.” His voice was coy and smooth, sitting evenly with the darkness. The calm created by it was numbing.

Dean felt a shiver run through his spine. He moved away from the bed, sidestepped Death as he shifted through the bars of light.

“You here to reap me?”

“Why else would I make a guest appearance?” He twisted the white stone ring on his right hand. 

“You must not be that busy these days.”

“Not as busy as I could be, no,” Death answered. 

The words sat dripping in the air. Dean’s eyes fell away. He was never quite sure how to toe the line with the Grim Reaper.

Death moved further into the room and Dean moved away, skirting the edge of the bed. 

“Are you running from me, Dean?”

“I ain’t going easy.”

“You’re trapped here. How many times shall we circle?”

“I need answers from you first.”

“You might ask nicely then?”

Dean worked the insides of his cheeks. “Please,” he said. “Can you tell me where angels go when they’re… gone? Can I get one back?”

Death cocked his head. His sunken face and papered white skin laid over his skull like a cheap mask. “It’s awfully presumptuous of you to insinuate you should be able to resurrect anything, much less ask for my help with it.”

“You in fate’s corner, then?” Dean said. “ ‘What’s dead should stay dead’? No takesies-backsies?” 

“I am an agent of order, Mr. Winchester. You are a purveyor of chaos. I don’t like you. You and your family keep sticking your dirty fingers in my pudding, and then have the audacity to complain about the taste.”

Dean looked around. Struggled. “So, no, then?”

Death shook his head, irritation washing over his otherwise nonchalant expression. “It wouldn’t matter if I told you where the angels go. Your angel isn’t there. Not yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re looking in the wrong place, and you have precious little time to do it. He’s already as good as gone.”

“Then, will you help me? Please?”

“I will entertain you because I’m curious,” Death said. “You continue to bend the line between human and monster, angel and god. Of your own volition, mostly.” He waved a hand in front of him. “Except for the few times I’ve stepped in to act as your Deus Ex Machina, you’ve been an example of playing the game of life to it’s full potential. Using each of the cards as they’re not intended. Falling almost effortlessly into solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems.”

He followed Dean the opposite way around the room, watched voraciously as they danced around each other. “I wouldn’t say _effortlessly_ ,” Dean corrected under his breath.

“How far can you take it, Dean? Can you find a soul in the void? Is it the human in you, or is it just you? Is it perhaps the strength of your free will? Or is it the parts of your family that make up the whole? These are the things I ask myself. I want to understand because,” he paused. Thought. “Because I’m Death, and rarely do I get curious. Never have I come across such pure chaos as you and yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No,” Death agreed. “You wouldn’t, I suppose. Because it’s just the way you operate. You can’t see the difference in you. The…” Death’s fingers went to his mouth, he kissed the tips of them. “The atmospheric storm of energy and bite and spit and determination that glues you together. It’s fascinating. Beautiful.”

Dean flexed his jaw, felt the walls with his palms. “Then help me find my angel,” he said.

“Yes,” Death smiled. “ _Your angel_. That’s quite curious too, isn’t it?” He watched Dean. Waited for a reaction, then carried on when his eyes didn’t fall away or falter. “The spell he used. The one that cured you from that nasty black spot on your soul. The Mark? It was a binding spell. Castiel bound himself to you when he performed it. Bravo, actually. I don’t know if he knew it would do that, but it actually prevented him from dying completely.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Now he sits in the void between worlds, waiting. Unless you can find him.”

Death’s eyes flared. He was baiting Dean. Watching him like a lab rat. Waiting for him to take a bite.

Maybe he was a lab rat. Maybe that’s all he was.

“Take me there,” Dean said.

Death’s smile grew. “Always so quick to act. Don’t you want to know what’s in the buckets at the end of those strings? Or will you dive headfirst into this one as you did the Mark of Cain?”

Dean stumbled, started to speak and stopped again. He remembered the desperate conversation he’d had with Cain. When they’d slapped their forearms together and that spot of pure evil copied onto him like Ebola jumping victims. Cain had warned him of the threat. Of the _great burden_ of it. Dean didn’t have time to hear it. He’d had a mission.

He didn’t have time to hear this now, but experience and growth nagged at him. “Gimme the highlights.”

“Your souls have a magnetic pull to one another, but only so long as you’re alive.” He paused. “Well, so long as you’re not _dead_.” He gestured to Dean and wagged his hand in an “iffy” motion. “As I said, when you pass on, the link is broken and your angel is released to the ether with his passed brothers and sisters. You can’t retrieve him from that. I can’t retrieve him from that. Only God can piece the angels back together once they’ve dispersed.”

“And before he rubberbands into oblivion?”

“I’m willing to restore you to life right now and you can hold onto your angel as he waits in the void for the rest of your life. Until the day you die. It might buy you time. You might come up with a different solution. You might not.”

“What’s the void?”

“What does it sound like, Dean?”

Dean shuffled. Knew he couldn’t let Cas stay there. “Or?”

“Or, you can go try to find him right now. If you do, I will restore him. But, I won’t bring you back. The Fates will have you to themselves.”

“Well, I’ve died before,” Dean said quietly.

“Excellent,” Death smiled. “The catch is, the only reason you even have a chance of finding him at all is because that dear brother of yours is still keeping you alive. If he gives up on you, then you and the angel are both lost. You only have as long as your brother has faith in your ability to spring back from my fingertips.”

Dean’s stomach twisted as he imagined Sam on his hands and knees grappling against Dean’s idiotic, unintentional suicide. But he trusted Sam. And he knew his brother’s determination.

“Take me to Cas,” he said quietly.

“I’ll take you to the void, Dean. You have to find the angel yourself.”

Death extended a hand.

Dean felt the fear in him rise. The gravity of Death’s palm screamed at him to run the other direction. But he stayed. He watched the knobby fingers flatten toward him. Felt the hunger in Death’s stare as he waited. Dean’s hand hesitated at his side, cold and clammy.

_I found Cas in purgatory. I can find him again._

He grasped Death and was pulled into the black with the flutter of crow’s wings.

  
  


+

  
  


Castiel listened to the hollow whisp of breath in his chest. 

The darkness around him swallowed him completely. It was very much like being in the vast expanse of space, only no beautiful stars. His mind wanted to register sound. It was used to it. But there was none. So it made them up. Relayed synapse pulses played back to him like an audio track of memory.

A cough here. A sneeze there. Sometimes Dean saying his name. Sometimes the muffled roar of the Impala driving away. Sometimes the sound his wings made when he flew. But that was a very long time ago.

Right now, his mind recalled the sound of his vessel breathing. The soft hum of air in and out of his nose. The memory of it tickling against his skin if he put his arm near his nostrils. Or the sound of Dean’s soft snoring when Cas would watch over him. How sometimes, for those brief moments, he seemed content.

Castiel smiled to himself. He reached a hand out and pretended Dean was there next to him to take it. In the blackness, he could imagine anything. He could feel Dean’s rough, calloused fingers against his skin. Wondered how it would have felt to nuzzle his face. To smell him when the mix didn’t include sweat and blood.

Sweat was ok. 

His smile spread.

He allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy.

It was all he had left.

Being human had taught him a number of things. Mostly it had taught him about love. Wanting. Rejection. But also determination.

He would never hold that against Dean. It wasn’t his fault. He just didn’t come equipped to deal with love like that. The love that Cas desperately wanted to experience just once before the inevitable. 

It didn’t make Cas love him any less. Just because they never found a way to come together all the way. It also didn’t mean Dean didn’t love him. He knew Dean fiercely loved him. Wholly and truly with all the dedication and loyalty he had. 

And that was everything.

Cas smiled again. 

Suddenly Castiel felt full, alive, pulsing. He blinked, gasped in a deep breath. His body felt like it was buzzing. A familiar hum came back to his ears. The lack of sound he’d experienced made it defening.

He’d felt it once before. Just before the reaper had taken him.  

His stomach twisted. He felt sick. 

He moved forward into the nothingness. He could move forever in whatever direction he desired. He’d never reach a wall. Never see a window. It was an endless expanse of shadow. But he moved anyway, toward the pulling buzz, full run.

“No,” he whispered.

  
  


Dean materialized into the black. Thrown with a force into the swallowing hole. He might have hit the ground, but he felt nothing. Saw nothing. So he wasn’t sure.

“Are you fucking kidding me? What am I supposed to do with this?”

He waited for Death to answer, but there was only silence. His own voice sounded hollow and lost. “Can I at least get a light, you son of a bitch?” He ran his hands up his legs, over his pockets, but wasn’t surprised to find none of his usual weapons or aids were with him.

_I guess hunter toys don’t get to come to the afterlife with me, but my clothes can._

He held his hand up in front of his face, but it was useless. There was no ambient glare to reflect off of him. He was blind. 

“Cas!” 

He screamed it, as loud as he could. He expected the echo, but the sound just muffled to dust. Like he was yelling into a pillow. “Castiel!”

He moved forward, feeling in front of him. Trained by the clumsy nature of man, expecting a wall to come out of nowhere and break his nose, or clip his knee.

His body began to hum as he walked, like a generator kicked on. He felt electric. Charged. Unrivaled. He felt an all-encompassing pull drawing him forward.

“Cas!”

His voice was swallowed again. Pulled into the void. Stamped out before it could travel. His heart pounded. Or, it seemed like it did… Dean shook the edging bizarrity and tried to focus.  

“How the hell am I supposed to find him blind?” Dean shouted. “Castiel!”

His pace quickened, feet turning, plodding heavily on the groundless floor. He wasn’t even sure he was moving. It felt like he was, but how could he be sure? 

Suddenly a sharp pain jolted through his chest. He fell to his knees. His body quivered under the electric hum. A sallow sickness overwhelmed him like a drunken wave of nausea. His voice caught in his throat and he swallowed. Choked back a gag.

He was running out of time. He could feel the countdown in his soul like the pause before a trigger pull. That little moment of fleeting grief he had for the thing he was about to end.

_Ten, nine, eight…_

“Cas!” His voice trembled out of his body. He crawled to his feet again and kept moving forward toward the pull.

The thrum in his chest got stronger. He stopped, tried to breathe through it. Fell to his knees. Was sure this was it. Sam was throwing in the towel. Dean was going to cross over and fail everyone. 

He closed his eyes, as if it made a difference, and dropped his face into his hands screaming. His chest burned, cracked, stabbed at him. His breath dropped out, short and shallow.

_Seven…_

“Cas,” he moaned.

Suddenly hands were on him. Dean couldn’t see, but he knew Cas’ touch. Their souls whirred in unison.

Castiel dropped to his knees, grabbed Dean in a full body hug, buried his face into the side of Dean’s neck. Dean grasped him back, desperately, aggressively and sobbed. “Oh my God. I found you?”

“Dean! Why are you here? What’s happened?” Cas stopped himself, hugged Dean tightly. “Yeah, you found me,” he said.

Dean trembled. Cas’ voice was smooth and graveled, just as he remembered it. His hands cupped Dean’s face. Their cheeks rubbed together.

_Six…_

Another sharp jolt of pain erupted in Dean and he cried out. Grabbed his chest. Wheezed. “I found him, you sonofabitch,” he whimpered, the breath stolen from him. “Keep your end of the deal!” 

Castiel gripped onto him.

He heard Cas asking him what was happening, but he couldn’t respond. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Think.

“No!” Cas demanded.

Dean heard the flap of crows wings.

He gripped his chest and screamed.

  
  


The painted cement floor was back under him. He was cold. Freezing. Stiff. A ten-ton weight sitting on the center of his chest had his ribs bowing and creaking. The smell of liquor kicked him hard, like a boot to the face. His muscles shook so violently, he hardly had any coordination at all.

He grabbed desperately at the weight center mass-- Sam’s hands-- and Sam cried out in surprise. Dean gasped in a weak breath, his lungs were full of needles and broken glass. He wheezed. Rolled to his side. Coughed and moaned.

His throat and mouth were dry enough to crack and bleed. As if he were packed with sawdust.

His limbs felt like dead weight. The sensation in them slowly tingling back in. Starting faint, then igniting like nerve fire.

A wave of nausea hit him and he choked, retched, vomited. Would have drown in it, but Sam moved him, elevated him. Told him it was okay.

“Just breathe,” he said.

Dean could feel Sam’s muscles shaking as he propped him up.

He closed his eyes and listened to Sam. The real, unmuted sound of him washed over Dean. He concentrated on Sam’s rapid, ragged breathing. His heart thudding in his chest. Felt again the way he trembled. 

Dean tried to right his brain, the filtered whiskey had worn away the sharp edges of thought.

“Sammy,” he gasped. He reached a hand up. First tried the bad arm and it revolted in agony, then the other, and touched Sam’s face.

Sam was slicked in sweat and tears, burning hot, logged with emotion, hair matted to his head. Whatever he’d had in him when Dean went down, he’d given. And more. 

“Yeah, Dean. It’s me.”

Dean breathed again. In and out. His chest bit sharp as a knife into his sides as it rose and fell. He put his hand on it, felt the tender bruising under his shirt. 

“I think you broke a couple ribs, She-Hulk,” Dean said shooting for endearing but landing somewhere around mocking.

Still, he smiled around the grimace. He could see the fright on Sam’s face. It pained him. How easily his full grown monster of a brother could turn back into a little kid.

“I thought you were dead, Dean!” He yelled. His face bright red, the sweat still dripping into his eyes. “I really--really… It was a long time.” He looked at his watch, tears broke. “It was twenty minutes.”

“I know,” Dean said. He grabbed the back of Sam’s neck and pulled his head down into a hug. “I know. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

He was speechless. All he could do was hug his brother and try to understand what Sam had just done. Try to wrap his brain around it. Twenty minutes of CPR was… rough.

He blinked back the tears in his own eyes. 

Then it rushed back to him. 

_Cas_.

“Wait,” Dean struggled. “No, no, no. Why am I here?” He rolled his head around, blinked, looked from corner to corner. Just the floor of his bedroom. No one else.

“This is where you passed out.”

“No. Why am I alive?”

“What?” Sam wiped his face. Ran his hands through his hair. It matted back on his head instead of fluffing back into place like usual. “Because, I--I did CPR.”

“No,” Dean said. He patted Sam’s chest. “I know that. I mean, where’s Cas?”

Sam stalled, wide eyed and exasperated. He looked around the room, took a breath, fumbled the words in his mouth.  “He’s… He died, Dean.” 

“No! I know!” Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Quickly reminded himself that Sam hadn’t been on the funhouse ride to the storage shed of existence. “I need to get up.”

He tried to roll to sitting and his body screamed at him. His shoulder bleated like a dying calf, his chest felt like a used pinata. He laid back down and held a hand up.

Sam looked at him like he’d finally lost it. Like it was time to strap him in the Impala and drive him off a cliff. 

“Help me up,” he said again.

“Are you freaking kidding me right now? How ‘bout you help me up, Dean? I just gave you CPR for twenty fucking minutes!”

“I’m old and broken, Sam. Be kind to the elderly.”

“It’s not funny, Dean. It’s really not.”

“I’m not laughing, Sammy. I really am old. And insanely drunk, by the way. Come on. Please?”

Sam shook his head, groaned, then got his feet under him. He moved clumsily and stiff. He was exhausted. Dean knew it. But this was important.

Sam grabbed his hand and pulled. Dean helped with his legs, screamed against the pain in his chest, a wave of nausea washed over him and stars threatened his vision. His body roared in warning,

It shocked the breath out of him, but he was standing. 

He gasped, leaning down into the floor. The room rocked back and forth as if he was on a rope bridge. He squeezed his eyes shut and blinked it out. Waited for the feeling to pass through or settle to a manageable level.

He felt toxic. The whiskey still permeated from every pore. He needed some water. A hot shower. _A fucking hospital_.

“On the bed? In the car? Where?” Sam asked impatiently.

“Outside,” Dean gasped. He cradled his ribs, his wrecked shoulder tucked into his body. They walked. Slowly at first, then gaining speed as momentum propelled them. 

Dean felt ok. He could do this. One foot in front of the other. Just one more step. One more hill. One more. 

_He’d better be there. He has to be there. I swear to God if that whole bullshit was a twisted fever dream I’m gonna go finish the job._

Dean fixed his focus on the door at the top of the stairs.

Sam stayed next to him. Dean leaned against him harder than he probably should have. Sam’s arms trembled viciously. His face was twisted in the kind of determination he only summoned when at the end of his rope.

The stairs were trouble. They stopped a dozen times. Sam’s legs kept cramping. Dean couldn’t move too fast because then he had to breathe harder, and that hell was about to make him pass out.

Sam didn’t even bother asking what they were doing. Dean assumed Sam was probably just one more strange request away from chloroforming Dean and dragging him off to the hospital without another thought, where Dean would wake up two days later in intensive care with wrapped ribs, one arm, and an endless IV drip of Dilaudid. Sam would try to convince the doctors that it was a hunting accident, but the shrink would come around three times a day anyway and push a little paper cup of pills up to Dean’s mouth saying with sad puppydog eyes, “It gets better, son.”

It was fucking feasible. 

They broke through the door and the rush of cold winter air and bright diluted sunlight was overwhelming. They blinked their eyes against it and ground to a hault.

“Ok, stop a sec. I gotta stop.”

Sam lowered Dean to the ground and collapsed next to him. They sat on the dead grass, short sleeved and freezing. Dean grasping his chest. He tasted blood in the back of his throat. The metallic ting spreading through his mouth like a firework.

_Shit. I must have tore something._

He glanced at Sam. Wiped his hand on his mouth and saw the blood on his fingertips. He quickly wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He didn’t need Sam to know. Not right now. 

_One more step,_ he reminded himself.

“Cas’ grave,” he said. His voice was lost outside. The energy absent from him. Used up.

  
  


“What are we doin’ here?” Sam spat after a deliberate, fat pause. He looked at Dean, face pale, hair matted. Shivering.

“Cas’ grave.”

“No, I get that, but I see the blood on your lips, Dean. So tell me what we’re doing.”

Dean swallowed a lump of metallic, it stuck in his throat like snot. “Please,” he whispered. 

“What? You wanna be buried there?”

“Gotta dig him up.”

Sam eyed Dean. Sighed into his hands. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

Dean gasped in a short breath. He could feel the congestion of blood through the pull of air. His chest felt heavy. He was scared a jagged piece of rib had punctured into a lung. “Death promised to rez him,” he said. His voice sounded wet and smothered. He swallowed again. Felt the blood coat his throat. 

_Shit. I’m going down fast._

“You met with Death? He saved you two?”

“No,” Dean said slowly. “He said he’d save Cas. You saved me.” He waited for Sam to understand. To know that he wouldn’t be sitting there right now if he’d given up on him. Sam bit his lip and nodded. Dean patted his brother on the chest then motioned forward, that he wanted to keep moving.

That he had to keep moving.

Sam clenched his jaw. Clasped Dean’s hand and elbow and hauled him back up. Dean wasn’t sure he was going to make it this time. His knees gave out, Sam held strong, shaking as he kept Dean balanced.

They reached the edge of the tilled gravesite and Dean dropped to the ground scooping back handfuls of dirt. Sam watched him for a moment, then broke into a trot back to the bunker. 

“Shovel,” He called back.

“Yeah, okay, Sammy,” Dean mumbled to himself. He scooped at the dirt, handful by handful, clutching desperately to his ribs, repressing the gurgling cough he felt at the base of his throat as ominous as the click of a released safety.

Suddenly a hand broke the surface, fingers dancing and flailing into the open air. 

Dean gasped, jerked back, cried out in pain, then grabbed it. He pulled. Screamed in agony.

Another hand broke the surface. Clawed a handful of dirt. Pulled. Then Castiel’s head emerged. He tossed it back and gasped in a breath of air, dirt flinging from him, coating his face, crumbling off the top of his head.

His blue eyes popped open, a bright snap in the muted gray day. They bounced wildly against the daylight, searching. He found Dean. Locked onto him.

Unmoving. Unblinking. Watched Dean growl, scream, fight, and pull him as he crawled from the grave. The black suit shed the soil around him, filling the hole beneath him as he emerged.

Castiel’s eyes. On fire. On Dean. Fixed and focused behind the grimace of his face.

Dean couldn’t help but see a flash of him from the dream. Covered in dirt. Shrouded in dark. Warm and rabid and hungry. But in this moment, Castiel’s eyes gave him away.

He was angry. 

“That was incredibly stupid,” he said. His voice was strained and broken as it rumbled from his dry throat. 

He moved to Dean, crawling on hands and knees and grabbed him. “I never meant for you to come for me.”

“Too damn bad.” Dean grabbed a fistfull of Castiel’s suit collar and his eyes danced wildly around his face.

Cas’ eyes teared. He swallowed hard. Shivered. Wrapped both hands around Dean’s head and leaned in. He hesitated just before their lips brushed. Got scared. Second guessed himself, unsure if he was misreading the situation. Unsure if he should rethink. 

It didn’t matter why he paused. Dean jutted his jaw forward and met him halfway, locking their lips together. Tasting the dirt and sweat and stench of him this time. Feeling the cracked dryness of his lips, his tongue. Dean leaned into him, breathed deeply, kissed like he’d never kissed anyone before. So desperate and happy.

The kiss lingered, then they sat forehead to forehead a moment before Dean pulled back to look at him. To see him again. Make sure he was real. That’s when he saw the blood spread on Cas’ lips. His hand flew up to his own mouth and he dabbed a couple fingers against it. He looked back at Cas. Breathing a sharp gurgled breath. 

Castiel’s eyes fell from his, he looked at his lips, looked at his posture and he smiled sweetly. “Your body is a mess.”

He pushed his hand up against Dean’s chest, matching it with the handprint there, settling it warm and firm against his broken ribs. 

“Yeah, thanks for the memento mori, by the way.”

Cas smiled, closed his eyes, and Dean felt a rush of icy grace rush through him, wrapping into his body, numbing the pain, unravelling the nerve bundles, healing the flesh.

He’d been healed dozens of times. Everytime, the shiver it brought to him was like the best kind of drug. The thorough warmth of it felt like love. Was love. Dean blinked. He could breathe again. His shoulder worked.

“You’re still an angel?”

Cas shrugged. Dabbed the blood away from Dean’s lip with his finger. “I feel like neither. Or,” he paused, turned inward, “both.”

“Your grace?”

Cas nodded. “What I seem to have of it is stable. Yes, mine.”

“So…” Dean searched him, didn’t loosen his grip from Cas’ collar. “Best of both worlds, huh?”

Cas considered it. Nodded.

“Guess that’s why I can smell you now.” Dean kissed him again, breathed in while he did it. “Pretty good for a guy who just crawled from the grave.”

“You smell like a bar.”

Dean laughed. He couldn’t help it. “As I often do,” he said.

They stood. Dean let go of Cas’ suit, and patted the dirt from the front of him. Then brushed it from his hair, off his face. He absently turned his shot shoulder in its socket, testing it, touched a hand to his own ribs. Both were much better, still ghosts of pains in them. Cas wasn’t full power anymore.

Sam sauntered slowly up the hill, shovel hanging at his side, pleased smile on his face. He dropped it and wrapped Cas with both arms tightly. “I’m glad you’re back, man. Thank you,” he pulled back and looked at him. Met eyes. “For what you did.”

Cas nodded. “Of course.”

Then, Sam looked at Dean, full body eye sweep. He didn’t need to vocalize his question. Dean didn’t need words to understand him. He clapped his ribcage and shot him a thumbs up.

“But, seriously,” Dean said. “How long does it take you to get a shovel? I gotta do everything myself?”

Sam bobbed his head. Didn’t bother to hide the smug smile on his face. “Yeah, well, I figured I’d hang back a minute when I saw you two making out.”

Dean’s face flushed red, his eyes darted to Cas and back to his brother. He racked his brain for something to say.

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas said instead. “I appreciate that.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> winchester-reload on tumblr
> 
> Latin translations by [That_loser](http://archiveofourown.org/users/That_loser/profile)


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